Can Beyoncé still cut it?, Destiny's Child, Love Songs, album review Having enjoyed a year's maternity leave from her position as pop's head girl, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is getting set to make a comeback. She has started 2013 with a salacious photo shoot in GQ, appearing, if not actually singing live, at President Obama's inauguration and appearing at the Superbowl. Sexy mother and demure stateswoman: it's an indication of how all-encompassing an ambitious modern pop diva has to be. Her solo return is preceded by a reminder of what put Beyoncé in this position. Destiny's Child, the girl group managed by her father, have briefly reconvened to aid their superstar frontwoman's continuing bid for world domination. They have recorded one new track for a compilation, their first since disbandment in 2005. It's a surprisingly light, understated groove and despite the title, Beyoncé never goes nuclear, delivering a subdued vocal, surrounded by gossamer-light harmonies. As restrained as it is, Nuclear sounds oddly excitable on an album that is not a hits collection but a set of smoochy ballads. It's an illustration of how far r&b has shifted in a short space of time that most of Love Songs sounds extremely old-fashioned - and not just because some of the views on it hark back to an era when girl power meant making sure the washing machine was plugged in. Destiny's dance-floor hits emphasised qualities of sassy boldness yet compared to the hard digital edges, dramatic sound effects, hip-hop inflections and time-shifting switches of today's dance pop, they sound as silky smooth as any Seventies seducer. Arrangements mimic "organic" old-school soul: lazy bass grooves, funky jazz guitar, electric piano, strings and handclaps, with all the emphasis on honey-dripping vocal harmonies. The singers weave audaciously in and out of each other, building up to pyrotechnical explosions of vocal magic from Beyoncé. They rather undermine her latter-day image as a sexy feminist with an independent mind, however. Without the drive of a dance beat, Destiny's attitude tends to the supplicatory and subservient. There are a couple of tough love numbers but Cater 2 U is cringe inducing, with lots of sensuous moaning about the ways in which the trio will serve their man. Worse still is a Timbaland remix of Say My Name, where patronising men offer smug, condescending replies to the ladies" complaints. Beneath it all, Destiny's Child were just another manufactured pop illusion. Beyoncé is the kind of star who wants to please all of the people all of the time, an instinct that led her to mime rather than risk a bum note. That's an impossible position to hold for long, and one that suggests a woman without real substance. She will have to do better than this to remain at the head of the pack. Download this Nuclear