Dua Lipa’s final album, 2020’s Future Nostalgia, moved the cultural dial. Launched into the pandemic, it was ubiquitous, neon-hued and life-affirming, successful two Brits and her third Grammy total, confirming Lipa as a world celebrity. It additionally kicked off a disco revival increase echoed by means of quite a few different artists, not least dance-pop veteran Kylie Minogue, Róisín Murphy and Jessie Ware. Even Beyoncé went disco for her Renaissance (2022), saluting Black queer tradition.

However within the video for Lipa’s Barbie soundtrack hit of 2023, Dance the Evening, a mirror ball shatters. And the messaging round Lipa’s third album, Radical Optimism, has been eager to fast-forward her into a brand new period, set up the requisite recent narrative and, maybe, transfer the dial once more.

There was some free speak of Lipa being impressed, this time round, by Primal Scream’s 1991 LP Screamadelica and Large Assault; of the Britpop 90s and Gorillaz; of the north London Albanian singer turning to low-slung British supply materials reasonably than Studio 54. Alongside Lipa’s go-to co-writer, Caroline Ailin, the writing-production workforce notably options Kevin “Tame Impala” Parker, recognized for his heavy-lidded, synth-rock soundscapes; hitmaker Tobias Jesso Jr (Adele, Harry Kinds); and former PC Music enfant horrible turned Caroline Polachek collaborator Danny L Harle, whose presence hints that hyperpop may be this album’s harder-hitting substitute for 70s grooves.

Confusingly – or, maybe, clearly – not one of many tracks launched to this point has sounded something just like the aural equal of the white horse from Studio 54 operating down a London avenue, wild-eyed and mysteriously bloodied, which is to say, the music of the 80s/90s cusp, laced with rave psychedelia and tweaked onerous a la Harle’s 2021 album Harlecore. All of them sound, reassuringly, like Lipa songs: feminine alpha dance pop through which Lipa shares onerous classes from her love life.

Lead monitor Houdini packs in icy synths and a carnivorous rhythm. Phantasm rolls its eyes at romance with hi-NRG verve. Coaching Season, the nimblest of all of them, packs frissons of Abba and Eurodisco into its assured takedown of sub-par males. All is properly: it’s Lipa’s third album, no radical, root-and-branch reinvention of her very profitable method.

Sure, Parker’s synths are commonly audible all through, giving Radical Optimism a pleasant analogue-sounding sheen, and the odd guitar and a few deft retro manufacturing particulars preserve the listener’s ears pricking up, however not a lot it distracts from the file’s job: to take care of Lipa’s strike charge as a purveyor of romantic reckonings you’ll be able to transfer to. Songs equivalent to Whatcha Doing, replete with elegant analogue synth arpeggios and a purring 80s engine, or French Exit, which reprises Houdini’s escape artist theme, this time with a Spanish guitar and a drum package. There’s even a joke constructed into the monitor itemizing: Something for Love pretends to be a piano ballad. That might be horrible information for this dancing queen, who up to now has left the mopey diva antics properly alone. With an virtually audible wink, the tracks swiftly deploys a cool 80s groove.

The pre-release speak round this file’s musical path isn’t its solely crimson herring. That title, Radical Optimism, tilts loftily at a private philosophy for tough instances. The world is a tough place to be, and Lipa has spoken out about innocents displaced by conflict and the Palestinian trigger. However the album appears to suggest a musical assertion about how one can exist now, which that these 11 songs – 100% about romantic relationships – don’t fairly again up.

Radical Optimism, then, is greatest loved as a top quality missive from courting land that takes some nuanced dangers, reasonably than any type of wider state-of-2024 handle that Screamadelica’s producer, the late Andrew Weatherall, would recognise as homage. Songs in regards to the delusions and frustrations of affection are neither new nor uncommon; there’s Taylor Swift’s latest double album, for one.

However it’s how Lipa tells them that makes her place rock-solid as an illustrious purveyor of club-toilet-queue recommendation. Regardless of faintly psych-tinged tracks equivalent to Completely satisfied for You, all birdsong, live-sounding drums and burbly synth closure, wishing an ex all one of the best with no trace of sarcasm, Lipa’s extra direct songs win the day right here. These Partitions is the pithiest of the unreleased tracks. “If these partitions might speak,” sings Lipa, of a fading relationship, “they’d say ‘sufficient’, they’d say ‘surrender’, they’d say, ‘you already know you’re fucked’.”

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Kissing a load of frogs earlier than your prince comes does, certainly, require industrial portions of self-knowledge and, sure, radical optimism. That is an album that, as with earlier Lipa outings, preaches company and self-worth; her excessive bar for distilling previous dance varieties into current pop bangers is maintained, regardless of the spin.

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