Album: Destiny's Child

Destiny Fulfilled, COLUMBIA/SONY URBAN

Destiny Fulfilled? Come, come, ladies, you're too modest. Surely this is the album for which music was originally invented in the first place - the medium's very raison d'etre? For what more could any listener want than yet another album entirely devoted to the vagaries of love, its eleven tracks trotted out with the bit and bridle of "urban" style gripped firmly betwixt perfectly-capped and polished teeth? In other words, without a trace of the imagination and diversity (of sounds and concerns) displayed by The Magnetic Fields in their monumental treatise on love, 69 Love Songs. For Beyoncé, Kelly and Michelle, love appears a wearying round of obsession and repulsion, pursued with manic moodswings. One moment they're offering to "Cater 2 U" with a warm bath "dinner and dessert, and so much more", the next they're wielding the scissors on your trousers demanding, "Is she the reason that my calls don't reach you?". Despite the mix of producers there's a homogeneity to the album, perhaps the effect of Beyoncé's guiding hand; and while the trio's vocals are impressive, particularly effective when producing a sensuous cloud of harmonies, like all soul divas they tend to crowd some songs with too many gospelly flourishes - the vocal equivalent of the smothering love that scared off the subject of "Is She The Reason", perhaps?