Ageing yet dapper, Duran Duran still materialise in our arenas every few years, but full-blooded comebacks, new material and all, are harder to engineer.
Ordinary World seemed like a return from the cold, but that single was 18 years ago and it remains their last significant hit. In Mark Ronson, however, they may just have found a producer with the ability to reconnect them to the mainstream and plug them back into their Eighties roots.
The bequiffed golden boy certainly earns his money on All You Need Is Now, unerringly putting his finger on the band’s endearingly awkward, angular sound of old. Safe (In The Heat Of The Moment) and Being Followed perfect the gauche glamour and off- centre choruses in which they once specialised, when basses slapped and synths sounded like screeching tyres.
Leave A Light On is this record’s Save A Prayer, thrillingly baffling lyrics and all. ‘Come the evening, I’m out on the dunes...’ moons Simon Le Bon mysteriously. Duran Duran are back close to their snazzy, impenetrable best. All You Need Is Now is available via iTunes, with a CD version next month.
4 out of 5 stars
courtesy The Maik
