THE X stands for Kylie's tenth album, not for kiss and tell, nor for the X factor of her sustained stardom.

This is Comeback Kylie, post Chemo Kylie, but it remains as feathery and slight as her New Year costumes at Wembley. The cute cabaret showgirl gives no sense of her illness, or the possibility of being Ex-Kylie, and vulnerability never shows through the glitzy, glacial surface, save for a wish to move on in the prettiest of pretty ballads, No More Rain.

Like the calamitous Britney Spears operating a blackout of reality on Blackout, Survivor Kylie sticks to playing a knowing fairytale role.

Maybe Madonna is too warts and all, too keen for self-exposure and opinionated revelation, while Amy Winehouse's emotional instability was writ uncomfortably large and frank all over Back To Black, but at 39, we know no more of Kylie from X than we do from looking at her latest Madame Tussauds waxwork.

She remains the perennial princess, one with a gift for applying a rub of retro chic to her camp electropop. Opening single 2 Hearts has nudged her into Goldfrapp's glam corner; Heart Beat Rock brings a girlish curl to rap; and Nu-Di-Ty is a teasing Ibizan dancefloor filler in waiting.

Sensitized is irresistible too, taking Serge Gainsbourg's seductive Bonnie & Clyde for a risqué ride with hits-for-hire writers supreme Guy Chambers and Cathy Dennis. Frustratingly, however, The One, Stars, Cosmic and Wow fail to trip the switch, being merely digital rather than vital, with no heightened joy or insight into saintly Kylie's second chance.

Girls Aloud, by comparison, are Noughties' naughty vixens, full of attitude and bawdy fun, and they are a wham-bam gang to boot, unlike the ever-changing if sassier Sugababes. They tantalise and traumatise, they entice then dismiss, on Close To Love, Sexy! No No No and the fabulously bitchy Fling. Contrary to Kylie, they don't hold back, and sussed producers Xenomania pump up the Motown sugar rush once more to accompany the girls' salty punk ebullience.