Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 17/10/05
Label: Polydor

Pop historians may one day take a look at the respective careers of Kylie Minogue and Rachel Stevens and wonder what happened. Both are blandly attractive, both share the same stage school upbringing and dubious history in sickly children's TV, and each boast featherweight voices which sound passable only once thoroughly squelched through ingenious machines. What's more, both are at their best when they submerge their lack of personality in the kind of music which is both gleamingly, inventively modern and loaded with old fashioned melodic hooks and shameless pop sensibility. Yet Kylie bestrides the charts like a pop colossus while Rachel - well, let's hope she invested those S Club riches wisely.

If Stevens' debut "Funky Dory" was one of the better pop records of 2003, yet perplexingly unsuccessful, "Come And Get It" is even better and destined to fare even worse. It could have all been so different - Stevens demanded "make me a star!" on the triumphant, day glo stomp pop of "Some Girls", and its chart success was its own reply. Sadly, subsequent releases - all inventive, all excellent - have done steadily less well, with the brash, rollocking "I Said Never Again" somehow missing the Top Ten. In modern pop terms, this is a P45 performance.

It's a miracle indeed that this album even made it out, though it certainly deserves to. Assembled by pop enthusiasts for pop enthusiasts, "Come And Get It" is exactly the kind of exhilarating, clever, brazen beast of a record that you'd expect from songwriters as talented as chart botherers Richard X, Xenomania and Rob Davis. This is a record that knows, loves and understands the cheap, sticky thrill of pop, the joy of music that doesn't have to mean anything tomorrow but means everything while it's playing RIGHT NOW. It's a record littered with sly references to yesterday's charts, from the Pet Shop Boys to Wham! to The Cure, but wrapped up in the high tech sheen of 2005.

And, for the most part, it's a sonic joy, the throbbing, techno-tinged "So Good" segueing into the Goldfrapp strut and squiggling electronica of "Crazy Boys". Even the slower tracks are a blast, from the staccato Timbaland synths of the vaguely preposterous "Je M'Apelle" to the sulky, sultry minimalism of "Funny How". It's as playful as Gwen Stefani's debut, but with about three less dud tracks. In fact, "Come And Get It" is one of the best albums of 2005, a thrilling antidote to the worthy gruel of Blunt and Coldplay, and record buyers in their dozens will doubtless agree. Oh Rachel, we didn't deserve you.

    by Jaime Gill