Date: 17 January 2025
Published in: Classic Rock (Italy)
Written by: Lorenzo Becciani
A grand return for the English pop icon, who apparently doesn’t care about age and in ‘Closer’ shows off contagious energy and grit to spare. Seven long years have passed since ‘Here Come the Aliens’, practically an eternity considering that we’re talking about the music business, but Kim Wilde’s class has miraculously remained intact: Midnight Train is conceived as a wild race towards the future, between new wave legacies and electronic avant-garde, Scorpio lets her rock influences emerge and a typically Seventies chorus, but in general the production doesn’t appear nostalgic or pretentious at all, although it is cleaner than that of her latest efforts.
The references to ‘Close’, published by MCA in ’88, are obvious and it’s as if Wilde wanted to draw a bridge between two periods of her life, as a woman and as an artist, totally different but equally significant. Instead of covering herself in glitter and celebrating herself, here she seems to be having fun like in the era of the historic video of Kids Of America and the setlist also features the pure dance of Trail Of Destruction and introspective passages like Savasana. Midge Ure and Scarlett Wilde give color to the less interesting pieces of the album.
