Miley Cyrus

“MILEY CYRUS & HER DEAD PETZ”

Smiley Miley

As long as we are actually listening to it, rather than considering its intentions, this post-pop-machine, experimental Miley Cyrus record is not too good.

“Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz” is long and slack, stretching many of its 23 songs out of meager ideas, and puts raw faith in the weird or the nonvarnished. At its worst — and its worst takes up a lot of space — it uses rudimentary digital beats, knowingly corny synthesizer sounds, out-of-tune acoustic guitar, a lot of reverb, and terrible lyrics about rainbows and the moon and missing people and weird dreams.

A handful of these songs have some poise: “I Forgive Yiew,” and “Bang Me Box,” with Mike WiLL Made-It and his comparatively lean funk productions. And as long as she’s singing something resembling a love song or a ballad she’s on solid ground, creating blurry, sentimental atmospheres, letting you into the songs. Beyond those and a few more, she can almost push you away, informing you with numbing frequency that she likes to get high and doesn’t care about this or that.

As for its intentions: The album is a show of power. It is the next stage of autonomy from a pop star who has been intensely managed and packaged back to her childhood.

The project seems to come out of isolation, despite the fact that members of the Flaming Lips were involved in songwriting and production for most of the record, and Big Sean, Ariel Pink and the singer Sarah Barthel from the band Phantogram appear as guests on individual tracks. The album sounds as if it derives from a single willful source. This is impressive.

And let’s not forget that Cyrus is a resourceful singer when she wants to be. The album’s closer, “Twinkle Song,” builds upward from an original, controlled country-ballad voice, both tense and spacey, into powerful yelling: “What does it mean? What does it all mean?”

That is a good question, even if it’s phrased in a dull way. She doesn’t give an answer.

— Ben Ratliff,

New York Times