Does It Rock? Duran Duran, "All You Need Is Now"

Prior to the past few months, if you'd asked my top five Duran Duran tracks, I would have said:

1. "Rio"


2. "Hungry Like The Wolf"


3. "A View To a Kill"


4. Their ill-advised yet utterly awesome cover of "White Lines" by the Grandmaster Flash.


5. Vacant.

I should note that I don't particularly care for "The Reflex" so that's why I omitted it in favour of a vacant slot. In any case, DuranX2 has always struck me as one of those bands that had a brief moment when they were huge, and their tunes were too good to obscurity, but as a band they were incapable of going any further. In that way they were precursors to INXS, Oasis, and Mumford & Songs (prove me wrong, Mumford!) They got to the point where if you were having a conversation about them, and the other person said "Man, I can't believe they all died in a boating accident 8 years ago," you'd just pretend you knew that happened instead of questioning it.

My point is that D-Squared was low on my list of 80's acts I expected to make a comeback. Scratch that: they can make all the comebacks they want. Shit, Kids in the Hall is now touring with Backstreet Boys under the brilliant name "NKOTBSB" (what does the first B stand for??) Anyone can make a comeback, but what I didn't expect was for this particular one to be this good.

I don't think I had any reason to. "Rio" is a pretty decent tune, but it's a product of a certain magical time and place called the early 80's, where whirring synths and toned-down saxes made anything into a hit. As time and taste got further from that era, there was less reason to believe they could do anything. They even had a release in 2005 that was not so great, despite the fact that you had The Killers out at the time pretty much operating as a Duran Duran tribute band.

And then, for whatever reason, they did this. And somehow, they managed to make this not only as good as those old songs, but maybe even better, at least by virtue of being new AND good. It's dancey, and delightfully detached, but the hook in that chorus just digs right into you and makes you want to move. I've heard it about forty times by now and I cheer up every time it comes on the radio. Somehow, they've managed to bridge those years without trying desperately to recreate the past. It's very much a 2011 tune, played with the gusto of 1984. Ringo Starr beard aside, Simon LeBon & Co. finally seem to have figured out how to do Duran Duran in the new millennium.

So yeah, that rocks.