Rio is a really good album, although I prefer their debut.
I thought Astronaut was probably the best, or at least the most Duran Duran album since Notorious.
Liberty and the whole load of varied and somewhat unusual, and very unsuccessful albums they released in the 90s were getting gradually less Duran-like. I think they got it back together with Astronaut, and the majority of Red Carpet Massacre kind of follows on from there.
Personally I prefer Astronaut, but it didn't offer anything new, which is what RCM does. It is a very modern, contemporary sounding album, and Simon LeBon has never sounded better!
I downloaded bonus track "Cry Baby Cry" from iTunes and it's a killer.