It's finally here... on the day of its release I joined the queue with every other gay male to pick up Kylie's new "career-defining" album, Body Language. And yes, it is good. Firstly the imagery. While the cover looks kinda cool (Kylie perched atop the text of the title in some weirdly three-dimensional "graphic landscape"), once you open up the booklet, it all falls apart. Something about the makeup and lighting makes Kylie look like a 50-year old woman whose had a tonne of plastic surgery (taking the Bridget Bardot thing too far). Kylie has had impeccable, tasteful plastic surgery - the photos don't demonstrate this... There's also something slightly wrong with the dress/locations. Most odd is Kylie in leggings leaning against a motorcycle in front of barbed-wire fence. While I'm assuming that this is some ironic nod to something, I seriously doubt that American audiences will get that, especially when Britney does similarly trashy photo shoots in a totally un-ironic way.

OK, the music: trashy, 80s, lots a beats and wired sounds and bleeping noises etc. etc. Kinda like the records Madonna's stopped making now that she's decided to be boring and write kids books. The lyrics are TOTALLY trashy with lots of references to Kylie being ALL woman, and "ready to go" or equivalent. It really does sound like a Dannii record, but of course more respectable because it's not Dannii... A worrying trend is the first hint of lyrical hubris to appear in a Kylie album e.g. "Guess who's back on top". But hey, the girl's been through a lot so whatever. So, yeah, its a great pop album, but she's still holding back. We know she can make a cool record that has real heart and intelligence (see Impossible Princess) that doesn't derive its coolness from irony. This isn't the dream Kylie album: the mythical combination of Impossible Princess lyrics and mood with Fever pop smarts. It's close though. But this is the wrong way to judge it. The real question is whether or not it provides a platform for global domination, and the answer is yes. Yay!