Kylie Minogue ‘Tension’ Review: Hit Factory

metroweekly.com:

Tension (★★★★☆), is a welcome turn away from the conceptual back to a sound that might best be described as pure Kylie.The first single from Tension, the runaway pride anthem “Padam Padam,” should have been an early indication that the album to come was going to be a hit.

In many ways it was Kylie at her best, delivering a straightforward, catchy song with a seductive premise and an inescapably addictive beat.Most of the album’s other tracks tick those same boxes, although few of them are as saturated with the level of faux-serious camp that made “Padam” inescapable for most of the summer.

The title track comes close, however, with the in-your-face swagger of its hooks and a gratuitous use of vocal distortion that stands out for how rare it is — likely for the best, even if it pays off in this one instance.The title track is one of a handful that feels indebted to Minogue’s contemporaries in the current pop landscape. “Green Light” is an upbeat number that has already drawn comparisons to her most recent record, likely because between its warm sax and strutting rhythm.It locates itself solidly within a post-2020 pop sphere that still has yet to fully move past the disco-pop revival that she herself helped to kick off.She wades into similar waters on the effervescently synthy “You Still Get Me High” and the sultry “Hands.” She veers off course on the euphoric “One More Time,” a track indebted to an earlier generation of pop but one that is still recognizably Kylie and easily one of the best tracks in a sea of standouts.Going from banger to banger as it does, Tension often feels like it fails to hang together as a cohesive whole, but it’s hardly supposed to.