September 6, 2010

Album review: Robyn - Body Talk Pt 2 (Konichiwa/Island)

Sweden's first lady returns with the second instalment of the unrelentingly brilliant Body Talk trilogy

8 / 10 There won’t be a better single this year than ‘Dancing On My Own’, so Robyn always ran the risk of besting herself before the ‘Body Talk’ trilogy was even underway. As the Empire Strikes Back of proceedings, ‘…Pt 2’ doesn’t quite end with a severed hand, but it does swing a little lower with an awesomeness that tries less hard to be liked straight away. This means digitised stop-start funk (‘Include Me Out’), Diplo-assisted heavy pop (‘Criminal Intent’), woofy bass-rave mantras (‘We Dance To The Beat’) and euphoric self-help disco (‘Love Kills’). All this, a guest spot from Snoop, and another standard issue crying-on-the-dancefloor stomper in ‘Hang With Me’, beefed up from the acoustic version on ‘…Pt 1’. The acoustic track here, ‘Indestructible’, must surely be destined for even bigger melancholic heft before the year is out. With not a single duffer over another eight tracks, it looks like our eventual Best Of Body Talk compilation might just be the album of the year.

Dan Martin