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Duran Duran - Rio
| Pitchfork |
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For the last 20 or so years Duran Duran have essentially been a post-fame band, racking up albums, pleasing their very devoted fanbase, occasionally trying new things, and becoming an admirable pop fixture that no longer communicates with casual listeners. Though their loyalists will howl at the notion, the Duran Duran people care about is the one that recorded Rio and drank cocktails underwater. The band made most sense at its most successful. Rio isn't just front-loaded with some of the era's most bulldozing hits, it's still Duran's best shot at an artistic legacy. Their first album was made by a group shaking off its David Bowie and Japan crushes, Seven and the Ragged Tiger was a grand and flimsy folly: Rio is where the band's hunger for success really catalyzed its mix of rock, disco, and heartthrob pop. You can't understand the 1980s without watching the promos for "Rio" (yachts!) and "Save a Prayer" (elephants!), but the album has higher peaks. "Hungry Like The Wolf" is the group at their most lustily, nonsensically exciting, and the self-mythologizing "Hold Back the Rain" supercharges the band's early synth-pop sound and strafes it with gated snare drums to magnificently shameless effect. As for "The Chauffeur", Rio's big art-rock climax, it's a new wave "A Whiter Shade of Pale": cryptic, stately, sealed into its time but defining it. Rio is, as it was in 1982, a romp of a record-- so how does loading it with extras affect that? Early believers in the power of 12" mixes to widen a band's range and transform their songs, Duran Duran were-- often justly-- proud of the extended "night versions" they created for their singles. But what's on evidence on the deluxe edition of Rio isn't so much transformation as commercially minded perfectionism. With the record selling slowly in the US, they had most of the first side remixed to sound punchier and more dancefloor-ready. These "Carnival Remixes" sit next to the songs' UK original mixes and the Night Versions-- and in some cases the demo versions too-- and the differences honestly aren't great enough to justify listening to all of them. The 2xCD package is probably best used as a way of recreating whichever version of Rio floats your nostalgia yacht....full text |
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| Sputnikmusic |
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Yes. Rio. This is Duran Duran's definitive disc and one of the highlights of the New Wave movement. Not only does this disc capsize the band in the 80's, it capsizes what people think of when they think of 80's music. Synths blazing, people dressed in casual suits, beach parties and shaggy hair. Being one of the first straight up pop bands, Duran Duran must have been under pressure to follow up their surprise hit eponymous debut. The album itself had reached number 6 on the pop charts and peaked at number 101 overall. This doesn't seem like a lot, but being a British pop band who had just released their second album, it was big for them. Being that track by track reviews are lame an ineffective, these songs will be reviewed in a way that is sort of like that, but hopefully less painful....full text |
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| Adriandenning |
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Tiger, Notorious, Big Thing, Liberty, adriandenning.co.uk album reviews Duran Duran Duran Duran 7 ( 1981 ) Girls On Film / Planet Earth / Anyone Out Here / Careless Memories / Is There Something I Should Know / Night Boat / Sound Of Thunder / Friends Of Mine / Tel Aviv / To The Shore Dewran Dewran or Doorun Doorun? How do you pronounce it? I've heard both in my time although i'm fairly sure the former is the correct way. Anyhow, for the existence of Duran Duran and similar early eighties groups, I blame David Bowie and Roxy Music. In the hip clubs during the late 70s when experimental albums such as 'Low' and 'Heroes' had dented Bowie's commercial stock, his artistic reputation was higher than ever. Entire other artists careers sprouted out of a single Bowie album or image. Roxy Music and their sense of pop mixed with Bowie and his 'out-there' nature to produce groups just like Duran Duran. They made an instant impact with their first two singles as well, 'Girls On Film' and 'Planet Earth'. I'm old enough to remember both from when they first came out. Neither song is as sleek or persuasive as the singles they'd produce shortly afterwards, but both are solid slices of new-wave pop. Both songs are also an early indication of those plastic drum rolls and bass lines that sound like an elastic band being flicked about, rather than actually fill out the bass within the overall spectrum of sound. The third song on the album you'd think would have a tough job being the song that follows the two hit singles. Lucky for us and Duran Duran then that it's terrific, 'Anyone Out There' is Duran Duran exactly as anybody old enough would remember their earlier material. Synths here and there, the little plastic rhythm section and Simon Le Bon with his keening vocals. It works, it's got a tune, which is something Duran Duran were quick to build upon in future years. Pop tunes were their forte. Side two of the album arrived before Duran Duran realised that pop was their forte. We've one song which is entirely instrumental and a couple of other moody tunes containing instrumental intros and/or sections. Almost as if Duran Duran were attempting to compose their own version of Bowie's low, only instead of the freezing windswept atmosphere of 'Low', their version sounds like it's beamed in from a beach-hut in Brazil. So, after a strong first half the album loses it's way a little? Well, yes. This more experimental 2nd half is still endearing in its own strange way, but by no means something you'll dig out again and again unless you're doing so for purely nostalgic reasons. Anyroad, with the decent songs contained on the album overall, a '7' seems roughly fair to this set of ears, at least....full text |
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