Review - Another step

Date
Published in
Melody Maker (UK)
Written by
Caroline Sullivan

There is every likelihood that Miss Wilde will not take the following pronouncement in the spirit that it's meant, but here it is: with this, her fifth album, Kim Wilde proves that she's abundantly familiar with the concept of camp. And now that she's finally owned up to it - come out of the closet, so to speak - she's produced her best LP ever.
Gone, long gone (well, almost) is the Kim of the chirpily innocious pop-rock 45 - there's no "Kids in America"-style blandness here.No, Kim for '86 is a combination of "Love blonde"-era sultriness, Sixties girl-singer wailing and an utter lack of humour - in other words, camper than Barry Island, and a million times more fun. Some classic themes are given the full works: on "She hasn't got time for you", Kim consoles a mistreated swain, and the Gogi Grant throb in her voice alone is worth the price of admission. "Missing" - which contains the lines "It's cold in the streets/there's a cold in her nose" - is a gorgeous, scorching ballad of the sort Kathy Kirby would have given gher eye-teeth to cover.In fact, side two in its entirity could have been airlifted directly from 1962, when a song was a song and, as such, afforded properly melodramatic treatment.
Her voice is remarkably similar, in its timbre and pitch, to Marie Osmond's - both embody a tenderness and poignancy that has never been critically acknowledged. The difference, though, is that Kim sounds slightly huskier, grittier - as though she's experienced adult delights like black coffee and night buses.
She's an anachronism, in a way... but how nice that she's around in 1986.