Exiled Records

Reviews:

All little sisters like to try on big sister's clothes. Australia's Dannii Minogue is no exception, especially since she's been making discoid fluff-pop since 1990-three years after older sib Kylie hit the British and Australian charts with her first singles. Like most younger sisters, Dannii is a bit rebellious-can't you tell? She's brunette, Kylie's blonde. Duh!

Dannii is also a lot more overtly dirty than her big sis (or should that be "dirrty"? I forget), which is less a matter of showing skin than cultivating what husk exists in her pipes and cultivating a public image that's trashy-hot rather than gossamer-gorgeous. The music of Neon Nights is pretty sleazy, too: the disco-funk grind of "Put the Needle on It" and "Hey! (So What)," the digital grime of "On the Loop," the wiggy synth-noise solo of "Creep," the pummeling bassline of "Push." The lyrics are just as blunt. "Put the Needle on It" is DJ-centric double-entendre ("I'll tell you where I want it . . . Dirty hands I demand"), while "Vibe On" gets even less subtle than lines like "I'm a vibraholic now... Jump on top it/ Sit right on it /Plug it in... Gotta have vibrations."

Dannii's less perfect than Kylie by design, but Neon Nights falls short of Kylie's Fever for different reasons: namely, almost no disco-pop record on earth can match that landmark. But Dannii deserves to crack America just as much; few 2003 albums aim for the mainstream as truly or with as much verve.