Once upon a time it was the second difficult album that decreed how much a given musician had the backbone, the right caliber to be able to cement one's career or sink into the infinite bed of one-hit wonder. With the unpredictability of algorithms and the collapsed attention span, the moment of fame can come much later. Consolidating it even more difficult. Of course, “New Rules” had marked a starting point in Dua Lipa's rise, but it was the dazzling season of “Future Nostalgia” that truly launched the British musician into the empyrean of powerful pop stars, sealing a three-year period of success who relaunched her as an unstoppable dance diva. Closed the chapter, and with a tie-in in the soundtrack of “Barbie” to arrive as an enthralling corollary, it was the right time to start a new era. The premises were those for a new turning point: the presence of Kevin Parker and Danny L Harle in the production and the references to Primal Scream and Massive Attack gave a foretaste of a collateral deviation that linked back to his beginnings with a more mature and aware look. Everything remains in the field of hypotheses: fully in line with the previous creative season, “Radical Optimism” is configured as a compact dance experience, a sort of long compendium to a creative course that knows no end. When you dance, you dance, yet you struggle to hide a few yawns.
Not that the album in itself bears witness to a disastrous fall: the competence remains intact, the constructions show one popstars fully present to himself and his game. However, it may be because the glorious euphoria of the previous album is missing, it may also be that the production coordinates favor more lulling and suspended atmospheres (perfectly in line with Parker's path), but despite the brevity, the flow of the album does not show the steely temper of “Future Nostalgia”, the stainlessness of melodies designed to immediately dominate the scene.
Even the singles, however carefully chosen, lack the necessary bite. Pass by “Houdini”, among the three the one that best takes advantage of the expanded production choices to reel off a hypnotic refrain like a mantra; “Training Season” makes use of an emphatic refrain, surrounded however by totally dispensable verses, while “Illusion”, although better structured overall, draws too heavily from Kylie Minogue's repertoire (the video shot in the same swimming pool that welcomed the of “Slow”) and Sophie Ellis-Bextor to really make her mark.
In short, Dua Lipa's radical optimism appears sleepy, she wants to be clear and resolve her ambiguities but instead lets them meander uncontrolled, not without dignified results (the openings sixties of “End Of An Era”, the Indian touches of “French Exit”), but more often with an uncertainty of trait that leads the songs to dangerously graze the streamingcore (the slow-motion Ava Max of “Whatcha Doing”) or to give yourself to a euro cosplay of little weight (the Swedish way of “Falling Forever”).
Better, in short, a sparkling moment that is reminiscent of the folktronic Madonna of “American Life” (“Maria”), a passage that clarifies how well the allure psychedelic production could have benefited from a different approach to writing, why not also close to territories power balladlike those touched by the final “Happy For You”.
However, in a structure that is too reminiscent of the previous album, falling into unfavorable comparisons is unfortunately inevitable. Dua Lipa certainly remains an interpreter and author capable of bringing out the best even from moments of tiredness, but this change halfway through is unfortunately less convincing than expected.
05/14/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
