Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
You can be as radical as you like, you can aspire to change, to grasp the opportunity to experiment beyond the natural borders of your own self imposed limits, what you should never do, not least without care and attention to the past is to dilute the artistry created by divulging your work with others who will arguably take it down to a level that might not be appreciated by many.
Duran Duran’s latest album is perhaps a case in point that serves notice to others not to mess too far with a truly winning formula and allow the winds of inappropriate change blow you off course. Paper Gods, the band’s 14th studio album slips into this chasm and thankfully doesn’t fall too far into the void from where light escaping is improbable and long standing reputations being recovered is impossible. Others have slipped further away from the true essence of their work to ever really be thought of in the same way again, Duran Duran escape because the foursome are too inspiring to really allow themselves to be smothered completely.
Collaboration is all well and good, in many ways it offers a window to a different world, like only ever travelling from the Birmingham suburb of Selly Park down the Pershore Road everyday of your life and suddenly being offered the chance from one good deed to drive a train on the long and beautiful journey from North to South Africa; such moments can offer a memory of beauty. Yet if you had to do the journey every week, if you had to answer to someone else’s whims, desires and arguments, you would soon grow weary of the trek.
Such is the issue with Paper Gods, the essence of the Duran sound is there but is gets muddled, tangled in an outsiders thoughts and whilst it sounds cool in places, it sound becomes a set of bewildering anecdotes delivered by someone else’s lack of timing and experience.
The stand out track is perhaps to be heard right at the end of album and the soaring order that resides in The Universe Alone more than makes up for the less favourably exciting tunes on offer.
Duran Duran have always hit the mark when it comes to their music, whilst they haven’t wandered too far from the inner ring of music’s impressive target, they won’t make the cut for the main event. A true shame but sometimes so much different takes on where a song should go can leave a listener despairing for the greatness that has always been there.
Ian D. Hall