Duran Duran's "Red Carpet Massacre"

Duran Duran, Red Carpet Massacre (Epic) GRADE: B-

Duran Duran's Red Carpet Massacre is a dirty, sexy party album about the evils of dirty, sexy parties. It's a concept disc about vanity, greed and shilling souls recorded by Brit dandies whose oeuvre is built on how rich and pretty they are.

Simon, Nick, Roger and John thumb their noses at the shallow allure of modern celebrity — and then hire Justin Timberlake and producer Timbaland to make sure it’ll burn up the vainglorious neon of the Sunset Strip.

D-Squared want to have their cake and eat it with those girls on film, too. They’re all proud, preaching fathers now; they’re also devastatingly studly rock stars who crave one last taste of MTV. Talk about a tough tightrope walk. Sometimes, when Timbaland or Timberlake or newcomer Nate “Danja” Hills is hammering out the hard hip-hop grooves — as on the grating monotony of Nite-Runner or the awkward title track— the band sounds removed, lost, as if it wandered into the wrong studio. Guitarist Andy Taylor, the band’s resident rocker, reportedly left his mates due to the new direction. What with all the programmed beats, you wonder why drummer Roger Taylor didn’t split, too.

But if Red Carpet Massacre isn't DD's best album, it’s still one of their most interesting. A big reason for that is singer Simon LeBon. His rich, slightly nasally New Romantic pleading has never sounded better — or as comfy. It’s not just the range of his voice but its time-travel ability to link where we are with where we’ve been. On such a schizophrenic album, LeBon knows exactly who he wants to be, and bless him for that.

Addressing the ephemeral notion of today’s pop stars, LeBon opens up the album singing "These are days of hit and run / In the stream with everyone" over a squiggly rave beat better suited for Britney. The music and the band don’t blend all that well, a recurring problem on the album’s first half. But for those of a certain age, Simon’s shout-out to longevity (not to mention a wicked bassline by forever stud John Taylor) is a rallying cry.

Pretty-boy keyboardist Nick Rhodes eventually warms up to the battle as well, his towering bank of synths burbling and humming like a robot orgy. Thus it’s the album’s second half that really cooks, the past merging better with the present, the band reclaiming the album as its own.

On the lush ballad She’s Too Much, which addresses all the lost Lolitas of the world, LeBon delivers one of his most sincere vocals, the Lothario becoming protective of his former prey. It’s a stunning moment of maturity, James Bond coddling babes instead of bedding them. Infectious dance-floor thumpers Skin Divers and Zoom In, produced by Timbaland but improved by DD’s hunky swagger, condemn cybersex and the paparazzi — but celebrate our naughty urges anyway.

Tricked Out, an autobiographical instrumental detailing their path to 70-million albums sold, merges new wave synth, prickly guitars and sci-fi swirls, all the ingredients that got them here. It’s almost like they put Tricked Out on here just to remind people to whom they were listening. Same goes for the glammy Tempted, a song as ferocious as a ragged tiger that would have been a big fat hit back in ’85.

Red Carpet Massacre is the band’s first album since 2004's Astronaut, which tried too hard to re-create the band’s million-dollar sound. Its sales were suspect, so it made sense that DD reached out to Timbaland, Timberlake and Hills, all of whom are big on hits, short on substance.

But in the end, the producers should have been taking orders from Duran Duran — not the other way around. After all, if you’re making an album about the perils of rock excess, who better to listen to than men who once bragged about using gold-plated hair dryers?

For a video and a clip of the new stuff, go HERE.

Comments

[Marissa]

I'll admit my hesitance toward the involvement of the 2 Tims. It's Duran Duran, though. I gotta get it!
I'd downloaded OneRepublic's song "Apologize" a year ago when I found them on Myspace. I liked it. I'm disturbed that it's now getting airplay as Timbaland ft. OneRepublic. It's amazing how he takes top billing when all he did was add 'aye, aye' and electronic spoon playing.

[Sean Daly]

Yeah, I'm tired of Timbaland's sound. Same plodding beats, same vocal hooks. The best part of the DD album is when the laddies start fighting back and reclaim their own album.