GIRLS ALOUD
Out Of Control
(FASCINATION) A+

Girls Aloud are more than just a pop group. Though, really, were they ever ‘just’ a pop group? The rapid climb from reality show winners to respected performers is somewhat of a blur for anyone who’s been following them from the beginning. Within 12 months of their inception, any reality-tv-born shackles that could have held them down were banished; the combination of their charm as a group, those incredibly collated songs and no issue to tip pop music conventions upside down on its head has seen the girls delivering their unique brand of panty-liner-punk to the worlds pop climate for the last six years. This is a group whose affections are felt by an eclectic base of music lovers. Indie-gods the Arctic Monkeys, Nu-ravers The Klaxons, bizarre Brit-rocker’s Franz Ferdinand and even Coldplay’s Chris Martin are all strong supporters. In the words of Martin, Girls Aloud are the ultimate form of life. They are a pop music institution that will headline a main-stage rock festival alongside the Kings Of Leon and The Verve without any sense of irony, no matter how high the hair or thick the make-up. They are an act that have given us cheeky quips like “she’s made seduction a work of art, a PHD with her legs apart” and “shut your mouth because your shit might show.” They flip the finger to the world below; you can’t mistake their Biology. They have given pop music so much over the years, and – what may come as a surprise to anyone who thought they’d never outlast their second album – they continue (with dizzying success levels) in this giving fashion for record number five.

Opening with the swoozy-sixties-driven lead single The Promise (their fourth UK #1 single, and 19th Top 10 hit) fires Out Of Control in an exceptionally euphoric fashion. Typically, Girls Aloud and their producers Xenomania don’t piss-fart around with your conventional verse-chorus-bridge musical proceedings; preferring to throw in 6 different choruses and maybe a verse into the track and letting your ears be done with it. And when Cheryl Cole, whose recent marriage troubles have made headline news across their home country of England, sings “if you wanna convince me start again, if you wanna be with me in my arms” right before that insanely enormous key-change, you can’t help but feel the lyric. And there’s a lot of things to be felt throughout the rest of this record. Pop champions the Pet Shop Boys lend their writing talents to the albums second track, The Loving Kind, which serves as a finely-crafted sequel to the girls’ highly-acclaimed single Call The Shots from last year. The truly devastating lyrics come in thick-and-hard; “standing on a crowded platform, carelessly we lost our way/you may be disinclined, to find the love you’ve left behind, so kiss me then make up your mind, I’m not the loving kind.” But it’s Nicola Roberts’ (who shines the brightest throughout this whole album) powerful middle-8 (brilliantly placed after the very first chorus), where she coos “I’d do anything, sing a song that lovers sing, if I could change your mind, then am I not the loving kind?” Insert 10 million sad-faced emoticons right here please.

Rolling Back The Rivers In Time is a deliciously Hawaiian-infused (!?!?) number with a so-cheesy it can’t help but work chorus and a robotic middle-8 from Cole. Love Is The Key begins with a heavenly chorus of choirmen singing to the Gods, before it rips into a Paula Abdul/That Cat She Danced With in Opposites Attract style pop song that sounds more like what Gabriella Cilmi probably wanted to sound like when making her debut album.

Turn To Stone takes the girls back into the synth-driven territory of their Pet Shop Boys collaboration; but a darker, moodier response to love and its perils. Untouchable, clocking in at near 7 minutes, is not only Out Of Control’s brightest moment, but probably the second greatest Girls Aloud song to date. How many mainstream pop groups do you think could get away with creating a 7 minute song that, come to the end, you wish had gone for longer? Untouchable is as precious musically as it is lyrically; “and in my dreams it feels like we are forty storeys tall, when you’re around, we’re untouchable/I know that love shouldn’t be so hard, and sometimes we’re swimming with the sharks, but you light up and keep me out the cold.”

But it’s one particular line in this song that really trumps all the others, the song lyric of the year, which pops up during Nadine Coyle’s epic middle-8. It’s the kind of lyric that would make the likes of disco romantic Dan Whitford from Cut Copy incredibly proud and, possibly, shed a tear. “Without any meaning, we’re just skin and bone, like beautiful robots dancing alone.” Again with the sad face emoticons; gut-wrenching, resonating, heartbreaking; it’s absolute poetry. This probably won’t be a single, but it should be. Without a doubt, this is the song of the year.

The wonder continues with the electrifying Love Is Pain, in which the girls declare “just be faithful to me”, which comes to an incredible end with a remarkable shouty-section courtesy of Cole. Fix Me Up removes the balearic tone developed by the three aforementioned tracks by funking things up; it’s very Prince and The New Power Generation. The hilariously titled Miss You Bow Wow comes complete with two choruses, the second which sees the groups brilliant and always rowdy piss-pot Sarah Harding sing “I remember living the dream, 20 minutes in the hotel bar, then I slipped into your girlfriends jeans,” which then throws in a phone call to 999 “to get a doctor.” Absolutely Bonkers. And just when you think it can’t get any better, the last 55 seconds turn the song into a clever instrumentation of electro-pop blips-and-bops. It’s this odd, experimental and unusual song structure that make Girls Aloud so relevant and important.

Revolution In The Head sees the girls venture into the dancehall soundscapes, and they do it incredibly well. Coyle’s opening ‘give-it-a-ting’ rap is seductively satisfying, whilst the chorus brings awareness to the fact that a revolution of the head “don’t count for nothing, you gotta move the mask.” Live In The Country takes the girls into their beloved Drum ‘N Bass territory; a sound they’ve played with three times prior to this album over the years. It’s a spikey song, summoning up thoughts and dreams of living life in the country, away from the hustle and bustle of city life, with the spellbindingly sexy Kimberley Walsh singing about smoking pipes and strawberry shortcake. But then there’s the following line, which comes from loveable drunken lout Harding, “every night when I crash you can see it in my face, I look like I’m dead on my feet.” Slightly poetic coming from a girl who has, at times, been spotted falling out of taxis across Swinging London Town. Record closer We Wanna Party, a cover of a Lene pop song from years gone by, is excellent for the “we’re so depressed we wear our shades at night” line alone. It serves as a bonus track but, oddly, in a rather twisted fashion, fits into the theme running through the upper eleven numbers. “We wanna party but we’ve got no nerve.” Charming.

If 2005’s cheeky Chemistry was a concept album about the uncertainty and travels of celebrity, and 2007’s Tangled Up was also a concept album dealing with throwing caution to the wind and living life in a proverbial fast lane, then 2008’s Out Of Control is the Girls’ concept record about the growth, the life, and the end of love. A record which, in an impressively mature fashion, also conceptually delivers a theme of settling down. This is, fittingly, the groups most grown-up body of work to date.

There is a reason why Xenomania’s work with Girls Aloud is consistently flawless. Their collaborations with other artists, though definitely not terrible in the slightest, lack that inspiring and experimental complexity their work with Girls Aloud does. They are each others ultimate muse. Neither works as well without the other (a prime example of this are the non-Xeno tracks on the Girls’ debut album Sound Of The Underground), and both parties are probably aware of that. Album number five is not just one of their best musical outputs, it very well may be their very best. Pretty impressive.

This is world-class, life-affirming pop music that has the ability to take your breath away with each note.

Thank the Gods for Girls Aloud.

>>> PAUL FIZZYPOP’S ACE REVIEW.