CD REVIEW! Madonna - MDNA

It's always an interesting thing to listen to a new Madonna album. You never know what you’re going to get. The grand dame of pop keeps reinventing herself and sometimes she’s spot on (Confessions On The Dancefloor, Ray Of Light, Music) and sometimes it's a just bad (Hard Candy, American Life, Erotica). Madge's 12 studio album is one of her 'better' releases since the hip-hop influenced Hard Candy CD (and big flop) of 2008. On MDNA she takes to the dance floor with hard beats and just enough dance-floor bonhomie. Producer William Orbit, who also worked on her 1998 CD Ray Of Light, sits alongside French electronic music DJ and producer Martin Solveig and Benny Benassi in the production chair and they make sure fans will keep moving all the way through the 12-track CD. Most of the tracks are party bangers with Turn Up The Radio, Superstar and I'm A Sinner standing out as some of the best tracks she’s ever recorded. But while the CD is a collection of good music, she's not really pushing any envelopes or buttons and sadly, this record won't be the stand-out CD of her career. But at least it’s entertaining music, for now.

What others said:

* The Los Angeles Times, “On Madonna’s best albums — Like a Virgin, Ray of Light and Music — she lived in that pocket between pop’s present and future, and with each hit single she offered a dose of the new that confirmed her ability to seduce us. But the enemy of seduction is familiarity. The power to jar a lover requires the element of surprise, one that’s sorely lacking on MDNA. We’re 30 years into this relationship, after all.”

* The Seattle Post Intelligencer, “In short, the album is a dancefloor slave/party animal’s dream record fueled by a channel-surfing of moods and emotions running the gamut from rage and longing to danger and desire. At a tidy 50 minutes, the 12-track CD deserves repeated listens. It’s so tantalizingly good that there’s hardly a dull moment.”

* The New York Daily News, “So many good tracks crowd the disc, in fact, that even the four extras on the deluxe version rate as must-owns. The dance songs that dominate aren’t pushing mainstream club music ahead, as Madonna did on albums like Erotica or Ray of Light. But they’re in step with the most pleasurable tics and beats of now.”

* The Chicago Tribune, “It’s her best album since Ray of Light in 1998, an album that balanced introspection and pop dazzle in collaboration with U.K. electronic artist William Orbit. Not coincidentally, Orbit returns for the first time in a decade to play a key role on the new album.”