Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), Thursday 29 October 1992, page 21


Madonna still pop princess

I Madonna. Erotica. (Warner).

IT IS FAIR to say that Madon

na rates herself pretty highly. Who else would sample their | own songs? Madonna docs just that Ion Erotica, inserting excerpts of Vogue in Deeper and Deeper.

But this is typical of Madonna's brash and over-confident nature which runneth over on this 14track set.

The release of the album has Ibeen overshadowed by the launch jof her book Sex but as a work of jart. Erotica is a galaxy ahead. This

isn't the trashy collection many ! people would like you to believe, j Admittedly one or two tracks go I pretty close, including Did You Do ! //, a collaboration with a rap artist.

• But for the most Madonna has

| tuned in to her trademark beat and

; groove, reaffirming her talent as a class pop composer. (It is interesting that although Madonna has strived to be innovative, she has paid tribute to her old LPs by laying down record player "crackling" between tracks).

An appropriate benchmark for Erotica is how many tracks would

^Diake it on to an Immaculate Collection II. Six would go close.

Words, Bye Bye Baby and Thief

Of Hearts contain infectious dance rhythms. The sexy cover of Fever is plain but their are other ballads which you will here plenty more of, headed by Rain. (9)

Hunters & Collectors. Cut. (Mushroom).

PUB FAVOURITES Hunters &

Collectors have definitely

gone back to taws with this realise, relying heavily on the percussion influence which dominated their formative years.

And it may be hard to believe critics who say Hunters have gone forward at the same time, especially when the guitar riffs on Holy Grail sound like Boston's More Than a Feeling.

But the Hunters have explored, experimenting with funk, although the results have been mediocre.

Cut is in no way a dud album, but it does plod. Holy Grail, Head Above Water Grindstone and

Where Do You Go are all good, listcnable tracks but lack that something special.

Mark Seymour is also in excellent form up-front, mainly in the ballads, with True Tears Of Joy a real beauty.

Hunters and Collectors remain trojans on the live scene are a band to go out of your way to see. But let's hope they have one big studio effort left in them. (7)

Cold Chisel. Last Stand. (Warn

er).

MOST TWENTY and thirtyso

methings have at least one

Cold Chisel song they hold dear to their heart — you only have to look at the arm-in-arm choruses which form everytime songs such as Flame Trees and Khe Sanh are played at gatherings.

It has taken nearly 10-years for this soundtrack to emerge, a memento of the band's farewell concerts and motion picture titled Last Stand.

Cold Chisel were far from at their best but this was an event all the same and would please any fan, from Ian Moss fronting Bow River to Jimmy Barnes on Choir Girl, Standing on the Outside and

Cheap Wine. (8).

— BEVAN HAN NAN