Duran Duran - Red Carpet Massacre (RCA)
Paul Taylor
16/11/2007
3 Star
Manchester Evening News

CHOOSING their friends carefully, the old romantics have come up with an album which sounds of the moment without any dad-at-the-disco embarrassment factor.

Having lost guitarist Andy Taylor, the remaining Durans palled up with Timbaland in New York to create three songs - Nite Runner, Skin Divers and Zoom In - which are all propelled by the same brand of frayed, funky, sleazy big beats.

Having got a taste for the necessary groove factor, Duran Duran "kidnapped" Timbaland's right hand man Nate Hills for more sessions in London which produced songs with fabulously fresh rhythms, but all the familiar Duran Duran histrionics going on above them.

There is even, in Tricked Out, a scuzzy, cartoon-like electro-rock instrumental.

One track, Falling Down, was produced by Duran fan Justin Timberlake at Elbow's Manchester studio. A philosophical little ditty, inspired by Simon Le Bon crashing a motorbike, it is a languid, mid-tempo affair which is far from the album's best moment.

That accolade belongs either to the taut funk of Nite Runner or to the title track, a hyperactive electro anthem on the mixed-up world of celebrity, deploying hilarious couplets such as "Red carpet massacre, Don't wanna hassle ya" and then rhyming it again with "Deathstalk paparazzi, yeah!"

Released on November 19

Courtesy Manchester Evening News