New(ish) Music: Kylie Minogue – The Abbey Road Sessions

I guess I’m a Kylie Minogue fan in the sense that I’ve always thought that she makes some of the best singles in the mainstream pop market. Amazingly she’s now been doing so for 25 years, and a survey of her career reveals a remarkable consistency, with her great singles ranging from 1990’s Better the Devil You Know to last year’s Better Than Today, with many in between. With The Abbey Road Sessions, Kylie gives seventeen songs (including bonus tracks available online or on the Japanese and Australian versions) from her career an acoustic/orchestral makeover, and it’s amazing how well it works.

Each of these are very different from the original versions of the songs, and while few of the tracks stray too far from an acoustic guitar/string section mix there is an impressive variety across the album. A strong opening section sets the template with a straightforward reworking of All the Lovers. The record hits its stride with a brilliant one two three of an inspired On a Night Like This, which refashions the song as a torch song backed by a gospel choir, a resigned Better the Devil You Know, which has so much more meaning coming from a woman in her mid forties, and a mournful Hand on Your Heart, which does owe something to Jose Gonzalez, but is reclaimed thanks to Kylie’s great vocal.

Kylie has always been a fine pop singer, but I didn’t expect the level of emotion that she expresses in her singing here. Hand On Your Heart has a pleading quality that really cuts through the listener, and the deathlessly brilliant Where the Wild Roses Grow – here stripped back and spare, with Nick Cave’s rumble even more menacing than on the original – benefits from a hushed and haunting performance. Not all the songs are stripped down though; The Locomotion is brassy both in instrumentation and vocal delivery, and you can almost feel Kylie winking at her audience and Can’t Get You Out of My Head‘s insistent, stabbing, strings make it just as catchy as the original in a very different way.

What’s really notable about this album is how it takes what previously (largely) felt like disposable pop records and reveals what strong song craft there is behind them. I Believe in You, delivered as a ballad, swelling from a simple acoustic guitar to a full string section, puts the focus on the lyrics and reveals itself as a desperately romantic song. There’s an African influence to the version of Confide in Me, which retains its place as Kylie’s most unusual song, and one of her best.

It’s not perfect; reimagining I Should Be So Lucky as an I want song from a musical doesn’t quite work, and there are perhaps one too many tracks that go the easy slow build from guitar or piano to a string swell route, but from the slinky, seductive Slow to a romantic In My Arms, The Abbey Road Sessions works better than it has any right to. If you are a Kylie fan then this is a must hear, if not, this album might just turn you around.

Standout Tracks

Hand On Your Heart
On a Night Like This

Sam Inglis