Miley Cyrus—Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz

Miley Cyrus—Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz

Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz—Is there redemption for teen idols? History has shown that corporate singers can go on to lead distinguished careers, like Scott Walker, though the very definition of a teen idol has changed dramatically since Walker's '60s. Miley Cyrus followed in a long line of Disney starlets-turned-pop singers from Britney Spears to Demi Lovato, though Cyrus was distinguished from the rest by coming from a family with actual musical heritage, however dubious: father Billy Ray Cyrus scored a #4 hit in 1992 with the reviled "Achy Breaky Heart" and followed it with a string of other country hits. Unlike Miley and her ilk, Billy Ray was a musician first and an actor second, whereas the Disney stars were bred to be general performers: act until you're not cute anymore, then pick up a microphone and start wearing less clothing.

It's a formula that's worked for a long line of starlets, and Miley Cyrus is no exception. After her Disney series Hannah Montana ended in 2011, her image began to change when the media took hold of non-events like Cyrus' remarking on her mild drug use or her twerking of Robin Thicke at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. The latter event helped generate notoriety for Bangerz, her first album for RCA, which was met with halfhearted reviews and platinum sales. As Cyrus embarked on the album's supporting tour, she seemed destined for years of pop banality when early in 2014, a strange thing happened:

happy birthday to one of my favorite artists OF alllllll time @waynecoyne 🔥👄🎉🎈🌀🌈

— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) January 13, 2014

A mainstream pop artist expressing admiration for an established rock act is nothing extraordinary in and of itself, but fans of the Flaming Lips would begin to look on in amazement as Cyrus and Wayne Coyne developed an actual friendship in the ensuing months. Coyne joined Cyrus on stage in Februrary for a performance of the Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" and in March began to post photos of his band and Cyrus in the recording studio together.

The prospect of Cyrus and the Flaming Lips recording together was hard to swallow for most onlookers. Fans of Cyrus were generally unfamiliar with the Lips, and fans of the Lips did not care about or were skeptical of what Cyrus could bring to the mix. The collaborative sessions appeared to be unfocused and under no specific timetable, so for most of 2014 the only things that came of it were Cyrus' and Coyne's matching tattoos and a bizarre music video titled "Blonde SuperFreak Steals the Magic Brain." The Flaming Lips released With a Little Help from My Fwends in October, a song-for-song remake of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which featured Cyrus on the acid-washed renditions of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life," among many other artists.

The 22-year-old Cyrus and 54-year-old Coyne continued their platonic cavorting for nearly a year with no new material between the two and only some Instagram snippets to show for their work together. The prospective album seemed like a pipe dream until the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, almost two years to the day after her twerking occurrence, when the two performed a new song, "Dooo It!" before Cyrus announced the independent release of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, free to stream on her website through the music service SoundCloud effective immediately. Cyrus and her cohorts sing, "Yeah I smoke pot/Yeah I love peace/But I don't give a fuck/I ain't no hippie." The vapid nature of the opening song is a clear attempt by Cyrus to alienate her existing audience, concluding with the puzzling lines, "Why they put the dick in the pussy/Fuck you." Wayne Coyne, his nephew Dennis of Stardeath and White Dwarfs, and Steven Drozd all share writing credits on it and variously on most other songs on the 92-minute album.

The pretty "Karen Don't Be Sad" is a resurrected Flaming Lips outtake from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which explains the overarching similarities to that album's title piece, especially lines like "You know you're only letting 'em win," mirroring the battle between Yoshimi and the evil robots, but spun like an anti-bullying message. "The Floyd Song (Sunrise)" is a tribute to Cyrus' dog, whose death was the impetus for Coyne and Cyrus to get the aforementioned With a Little Help from My Fwends tattoos. The acoustic "Something about Space Dude" and its Oren Yoel-produced counterpart "Space Boots" as a pair blur the line between her experimental songs and her radio-ready material. Therein lies the genius of the album: by sequencing it like a jukebox from the nether, the group has made a grotesque pastiche of all the parts of Cyrus' personality, as it devolves into the cacophonous "Fuckin Fucked Up," back up into the spoken-word shuffle of "BB Talk," and into the Mike Will Made It-produced ballad "Fweaky" and wanton "Bang Me Box."

"Milky Milky Milk" opens up a new Lips suite, building around a sample of "Try to Explain" from The Terror with lines like "Your lips get me so wet/While I'm singing all the verses from the Tibetan Book of Dead." On "Slab of Butter (Scorpion)," it's amusing to see that after branding each of the songs he worked on in narcissistic fashion, Mike Will Made It is now associated with a song whose chorus is, "I feel like a slab of butter that is melting in the sun." "I Forgive Yiew" is pure pop, while the lovely "I Get So Scared" touches on indie guitar pop, "Lighter" a sort of mellower new wave. "Tangerine" mixes Lips spaceship imagery with a disaffected post-party passage by Big Sean; "Tiger Dreams," featuring Ariel Pink, is a despondent number about the futility of the world.

"Evil Is a Shadow" is a highlight, sounding as if it could slot perfectly anywhere on At War with the Mystics or Embryonic. "Cyrus Skies" apotheosizes the broadening of the mind: "Yeah I've been alive/But I've been a liar/There's some kind of love/That's so much higher." "1 Sun" is performed and mixed in the vein of Lady Gaga with Cyrus referencing artistic predecessor (to both) Grace Jones. "Miley Tibetan Bowlzzz" sees Cyrus' chants echoing over Drozd's new age synthesizer, while the tragicomical "Pablow the Blowfish" continues the theme of Cyrus' unfortunate run of titular pets. The album then ends with the personal triumph of "Twinkle Song," where Cyrus sings, "I had a dream/David Bowie ... was shaped like Gumby."

Speaking of Miley Cyrus' musical merit, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz would likely not be as good as it is without the involvement of the Flaming Lips. It's tempting to say that her input is secondary to what was accomplished around her, but it's pleasing to see that she's willing to go in a more challenging musical direction, even if there are some failed experiments like "BB Talk" and forgettable drek like "Bang Me Box." That is to be expected, however, especially on a 23-track album, and there are certainly more hits than misses. The unlikely friendship finally bearing fruit, Petz bodes well for Cyrus as an artist and is simultaneously a pleasant entry in the eclectic career of the Flaming Lips.

Fall Out Boy—American Beauty/American Psycho

Fall Out Boy—American Beauty/American Psycho

American Beauty/American Psycho—They say history repeats itself, and with the advent of Fall Out Boy's sixth album, that adage has been proven veritable. Where Save Rock and Roll was the distorted mirror image of Folie à Deux, coming out on the other side of fame, American Beauty/American Psycho is a return to the brand of Infinity on High. A welcome change here is certainly the lack of histrionics, though the bombast persists with mixed results.

American Beauty/American Psycho is the classic tale of a band trying out its new bells and whistles. It stands alongside Rush's Permanent Waves, KISS' Destroyer, and Green Day's American Idiot as an instance of established rockers opening up their sonic landscape; unfortunately, the results of these experiments don't always equal a good recording—as always, the core songwriting must be strong, which it is more often than not in the case of Fall Out Boy. Albums on the cusp of a new beginning are sometimes given dubious qualifiers like "transitional," but for Fall Out Boy, there should be plenty of oil in the machine; they had already shaken off the dust with Save Rock and Roll two years earlier following a relatively active hiatus for all its members.

"Irresistable" kicks off the album with an unfortunate horn riff, but ultimately gets to the point with haste, unfurling into a respectable if over-cushioned opener. Title cut "American Beauty/American Psycho" is more typical of their usual sing-a-long pop-punk—the least successful single, though certainly not the worst, but it does bring attention to Pete Wentz's increasingly trite lyrics. "Centuries" is the most celebrated single, and is more Patrick Stump than any other band member: cries, chants, and claps that tend to grate, over-produced, but not bad lyrically. "The Kids Aren't Alright" is better, with excellent harmony and less layers of superfluous arena-rock noise—not that arena-rock in and of itself is bad, but Fall Out Boy have long fallen victim to the idea that trying to recreate the sound in the studio is favorable rather than letting the actual live performances speak for themselves. "Uma Thurman" is the album's one successful meshing of the band's big sound with pop-culture jambalaya, as the sample of The Munsters' theme song is just plain excellent as its basis.

"Jet Pack Blues" is forgettable, sounding like the shriveled Siamese twin of "Centuries." "Novacaine" ends up being one of the best songs on the album because of the all-too-welcome distortion; it's a lo-fi crawler that, because of its essential nature, complements the dynamics that are ever-present in Fall Out Boy's music. "Fourth of July" should have stayed the soppy singular phrase as which it likely began life. "Favorite Record," on the other hand, is a fairly effective meta-retro love song that assures the band isn't disdainful of its roots; "Immortals" is the lyrical highlight: a self-aware double entendre combining the sarcastic relationship song of From Under the Cork Tree and prior with a observation on fame. "Twin Skeleton's (Hotel in NYC)" sounds more like contemporary survivors and one-time collaborator Panic! at the Disco. It's something of an anticlimactic closer, but it's respectable.

Beauty/Psycho has some of the right ingredients, but when they put it in the oven, the edges burned a little. It takes the hip-hop approach of having no less than six producers, but the group seems to have forgotten they play rock, which prides itself on its instruments first and effects second. Their vision doesn't afford the experimentation, but when they build on what once made them great, the results are promising. The album is altogether no better or worse than Save Rock and Roll, but given the times, Fall Out Boy need to either try something different or simply write better songs, or they risk falling into the bargain bin.

Kendrick Lamar—To Pimp a Butterfly

Kendrick Lamar—To Pimp a Butterfly

To Pimp a Butterfly—It seems like an obvious record to make. Hip hop has long been a genre that, in its works' most soulful iterations, borrows greatly from monolithic black artists. In this respect, To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) is nothing new, although it is a voice for a new generation. Kendrick Lamar offers Miles Davis as an influence in the album's creation, which again comes as no surprise, but it is notable in the sense that Davis—who today is seen as a legendary figure in music—was once essentially in the same position as Kendrick. Their talents are different, but Kendrick's situation now is one where his body of work is starting to establish itself. He lived in the shadows of Dr. Dre, touring mates Game and Tech N9ne, and consecrated West Coast rapper 2Pac. It is then telling that Butterfly features marginal creative input from this particular cast in contrast to good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012), which showcased Dre and contemporaries Drake and Jay Rock.

This is not to say Butterfly doesn't have star power, but even the likes of George Clinton, Ronald Isley, and Snoop Dogg take backseats to Kendrick. Rival Kanye West welcomes collaboration and wears the notions of clout on his sleeve, but Kendrick eschews this with repeated visits to the idea of "misusing [one's] influence" as part of the larger poem around which the album's concept is based—and it is a concept album, no matter what anyone says. Given this framework, it is not surprising that, outside the sample of "Every Nigger Is a Star," the first voice heard on the album's opener "Wesley's Theory" is trumpeter Josef Leimberg (credits). Kendrick makes his intentions clear with a foreboding James Brown-twinged P-Funk groove, with the key phrase "Bridges burned all across the board" presenting the album's most vital professional statement. Dre's spoken verse backs this move under the guise of separation, which highlights the subversive nature of the record.

"For Free?" continues the onslaught of Kendrick's musical shifts, this time thanks to jazz pianist Robert Glasper. The former's message turns from personal to societal as he attacks American consumerism and wealth inequality before his motivations collude to form the single "King Kunta" as Kendrick's crosshairs turn to his contemporaries, taking his shot at a throne he insists was abdicated by the time he got there. His quip that "Something's in the water" perhaps unwittingly foreshadows the direction he takes on "Institutionalized" with the modulated vocals made famous by Prince. Its syncopated rhythms and seamless backing from Snoop Dogg and Bilal take the forefront as Kendrick's distorted raps echo the sentiments of the preceding songs, bringing together the slave imagery and wealth concerns but with the first hint of self-examination that continues throughout the album.

"These Walls" begins an artistic deconstruction for Kendrick; at times the metaphors are heavy-handed with Anna Wise (credits) interjecting the song's partial theme of sex. His lyrics become more nuanced as the song sloughs its dance trappings, a process mirrored on emotional centerpiece "u," a nervous breakdown set to music. What begins as a descent snaps in half as Kendrick's rapping turns to staggering lament. The much-celebrated piece, while conceptually strong with a Stevie Wonder-like break in the middle, suffers from an unnatural delivery in its second half and liquor glass sound effects that give it a degree of banality. "Alright" is perhaps the album's weakest song, being less inspired lyrically and introducing tired apologues that stick out unfavorably among Kendrick's more contemporary references. Recurrent collaborator Pharrell's production is bare and his hook is even less memorable. "For Sale?" is a better appropriation of the "Lucy" subject, which here is at least presented in a humorous light.

Kendrick begins to reconstruct his sound on "Momma," a strong hit of nostalgia with funk styling and an off-kilter beat, which exudes down-home charm and times of decades past in his life. "Hood Politics" suffers from a regressive, petty quality to its lyrics and forgettable music, with the exception of its third verse which makes interesting claims about the state of the rap game. However, it does nicely set up "How Much a Dollar Cost," which mixes solid hooks with a plodding beat and downcast semitones to make something greater than the sum of its parts. "Complexion (A Zulu Love)" adds a message of equality to the slave themes put forth on "King Kunta," but it must have been apparent that the music was becoming predictable around this point on the album, as those involved decided to sequence next the second single "The Blacker the Berry," The most aggressive, Public Enemy-influenced song on the album is also the most explicit in its depiction of black oppression, but with the added element of personal hypocrisy.

"You Ain't Gotta Lie (Momma Said)" is a forgettable reiteration of themes expounded better on "Wesley's Theory" and "King Kunta," but the penultimate song "i" (heard here in a live rendition; the single released in 2014 is a studio version) is a breath of fresh air. Its near-bubblegum guitar and backing vocals support a complete feeling-reversal of "u." The only real problem with the recording is commentary and questions posed by Kendrick after the song that are rather empty and even senseless ("I promised Dave I'd never use the phrase "fuck nigga"/He said, "Think about what you saying: 'Fuck niggas'").

Attempting to tie it all in is the twelve-minute "Mortal Man," a make-or-break summation that unfortunately falls flat. It relies too heavily on name-checks and meaningless jargon (Murphy’s law, Generation X, will I ever be your ex?). It's not altogether terrible, but what follows—a complete reading of the poem that is dispersed throughout the transitions between the album's songs—is mediocre, as its continuation at the very end. In between these accounts is a repurposed Tupac Shakur interview, which by Kendrick's involvement in the conversation reveals a less savory side of his ego. Though the points Shakur made in these statements are intermittently interesting, they are somewhat myopic and unflattering aside from his assertion that black men only seem to care about their struggle at a young age before losing their fire.

There is no denying Kendrick Lamar has taken a great step in his career with To Pimp a Butterfly. It's a meaty work that's lyrically dense and has some great pop, but it's also uneven. The most derivative tunes, while pleasing, don't build on the music that inspired it, and some songs don't attempt this at all. It will be interesting to see if Kendrick takes his foot back out of the water with his next album, as he did not seem fully committed to the new sound, and because of it a lot of songs that were already served tepid seem even more lifeless by comparison. Its best songs are excellent, but the series of flops that mostly plague the second half are exhausting. Most of all, it's a predictable record historically and artistically, and it shows: the best songs are the singles.