- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Even with a handful of forgettable songs... the album is easily the best one credited to the Duran Duran name since 1993's Wedding Album.
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With too many songs trying too hard, Duranies will still go hungry for quality.
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Duran Duran has a new lease on life, sounding more vibrant and exciting than it has in eons.
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BlenderThe default setting is funk-pop bombast augmented by horribly dated electronica. [Nov 2004, p.128]
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Awesomely anodyne, breathtakingly boring and crushingly clichéd, â??Astronautâ? singularly fails to take flight.
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Astronaut doesnâ??t come close to ranking with the music that made the band world famous, but it has moments that make it easy to remember why the band rode such a wave to begin with.
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Astronaut takes a few songs to warm up, but by the time the band hits naughty dance-floor fillers like "Bedroom Toys" and "Taste the Summer," it feels like 1983 all over again.
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Entertainment WeeklyMostly unembarrassing and at times shockingly vital. [15 Oct 2004, p.72]
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FilterThe album's lyrics feature mostly throwaway new-age drivel... and gut-wrenching despondency reduced to bored balladeering. Or just plain silliness. [#13, p.102]
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Los Angeles TimesAt a time when newer acts, from fringe to mainstream, are moving the band's old ideas forward, Duran Duran needs to do more than just mix in the blips and bleeps of contemporary dance music to prove it has something to contribute. [31 Oct 2004]
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MojoThe root of the malaise most surely [lies] in the protracted production, which appears to have sucked the life out of whatever good material there was. [Nov 2004, p.110]
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New Musical Express (NME)Doesn't life already seem cruelly short? Do you really want to waste any of it ploughing through a new Duran Duran record? [9 Oct 2004, p.56]
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Filled with exhilarating highs and some confounding lows.
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Q MagazineWhen they strain for sexy modernity... it's as appealing as Mr. Burns writhing round in satin sheets. [Nov 2004, p.119]
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Rolling StoneRevitalizes Duran's early synth-pop magic. [28 Oct 2004, p.103]
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Before long, though, Duran Duran are adrift in an unforgiving sea of disco-dad dance-pop, anaemic vocals and lyrics too distressingly awful to repeat in a family newspaper.
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UncutIt's sleek, groomed and genetically engineered to within an inch of sonic perfection, but there's very little that's memorable. [Nov 2004, p.120]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 60 out of 74
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Mixed: 11 out of 74
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Negative: 3 out of 74
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NomNamDec 6, 2006Excluding Bedroom Toys, Astrounaut was excelent.
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mozmonkFeb 6, 2005Would have been a 10 , but for the naffness of Bedroom Toys.
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SteveBOct 19, 2004