Fresh from her fantastically bewildering appearance in Moulin Rouge as the absinthe fairy, Australia's finest returns with her eighth studio album, Fever. EIGHTH?! How time flies when you're having fun!

There are plenty of people out there who'd never bought an album until Kylie's eponymously titled debut appeared in 1988. It was a fabulous collection of Stock-Aitkein-Waterman cheesiness (the likes of which Steps happily attempt to emulate today) including the monster hits I Should Be So Lucky and Locomotion and, since then, her musical career has remained more or less phenomenally successful.

She's had 20 top 10 hit singles in the UK. She's duetted with Nick Cave and been signed to a veritable plethora of labels, including PWL, Deconstruction and now Parlophone. She's managed to do this while maintaining a gay fanbase second only to that of Madge - and she's been in more films than her. She's worn some of the most revealing dresses ever made. She has, in short, casually waved at lesser female 'divas' as she's passed them by with style, music and frankly everything else. She's even appeared in a Carribbean theatre production of The Tempest. When the NME was moved to say that she is "pop at its most exciting" it was unusually accurate.

Fever picks up where Light Years left off last year, offering saccharine pop at its finest and instantly getting your feet tapping. The album release was preceded by one of 2001's best singles, Can't Get You Out Of My Head, which predicatably beat off lesser "competition" (this time in the shape of the over-accessoried Posh Spice) to leap into the UK singles chart at Number 1. Written by sometime D-Mob vocalist Cathy Dennis, this is one of several songwriting collaborations in which Kylie has indulged on the album. Come Into My World is also by Dennis, but it sounds suspiciously similar to Can't Get You Out Of My Head...

Here and there we find nods to Daft Punk rather than her trash pop contemporaries, shallow lyrics smiling happily over disco grooves and providing fun throughout. It would be difficult to pinpoint one duff track on this record, but the more obvious candidates for singles are towards the front of the album - just like her first two records, in fact - especially the rip-roaring frolic that is Love At First Sight.

So, if you want something to drive to, dance to, play at a house party or cheer your workmates up with, Fever is for you. Time will simply fly by.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees