DURAN DURAN TRIES ITS HAND AT ELECTRONICA

PHILIADELPHIA INQUIRER

By William Ricchini

No one expected Duran Duran to have staying power. Fifteen years after their album Rio made them household names, watching these survivors of MTV's Class of '82 take the stage at the Electric Factory on Tuesday night was pretty surreal.

The performance featured a healthy dose of material from the band's new Medazzaland, which latches onto the electronica craze with uneven results. But unlike, say, U2, which uses synthesizers with all the elegance of the Green Bay Packers doing Swan Lake, the updated treatment isn't such an awkward fit for Duran Duran. "Electric Barbarella" and "Big Bang Generation," the best of the new tracks the quintet-turned-trio performed, are catchy synth tunes for a new generation of MTVers.

The problem Tuesday was that harsh, industrial instrumentation and sonic overkill often distracted from Duran Duran's melodies. On "Rio," Warren Cuccurullo played screeching guitar riffs over the synth bridge, burying the prerecorded backing vocals. On "Come Undone," Simon Le Bon was upstaged by his taped backup singers, who had no trouble hitting the high notes he avoided. (Keyboardist Nick Rhodes is the other returning group member.) Except for the occasional "Hungry Like the Wolf" or "Save a Prayer," Duran Duran avoided its old material. But in the effort to avoid sounding like a nostalgia act, it sacrificed a lot of great songs.