Miley Cyrus – Bangerz
You can’t blame Miley for trying. In the midst of weekly PR disasters — the latest being the ongoing feud between the singer and Sinéad O’Connor, formerly an influence — Bangerz would have sold millions of copies, regardless of the amount of effort put into it. It’s worth noting, to the duogenarian diva’s credit, that her newest LP is far from acquiescent.
In fact, it’s one of the most ambitious records so far this year: Cyrus tries her hand at hip-hop, electro pop, funk and salsa, all within 13 lean, Ziplock-sealed tracks.
Of course, almost none of this works. Album opener “Adore You”, which is Bangerz’ best track by a country mile, is weighed down by clunky, been-there-done-that lyrics. “SMS (Bangerz),” featuring Britney Spears, showcases the best of Cyrus’ countless attempts at rapping throughout the album, but is a convoluted, overproduced mess. “FU” might be the LP’s most egregious misstep: through a half-hearted and woefully adolescent Lady Gaga impression, Cyrus uses the term “LOL” as a verb without her ever-present tongue in her cheek.
Cyrus’ more sensual lyrics walk the tightrope between laughably adolescent and cringe-inducing, and she’s unable to tame the country twang that escapes through attempted dance anthems like “We Can’t Stop” and “Drive.” The uncomfortable sexual energy — if you can even call it that — from Cyrus’ notorious VMA performance is in full force throughout the record. Cue a collective sigh.
But the unsung hero of Bangerz is, without question, its producer Mike Will Made It. The album’s syncopated hip-hop beats, aluminium vocals and subtle string arrangements are the paint by numbers norm of contemporary pop music, but Mike rises to the occasion with enough enthusiasm to make it sound just like the first time. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to make Bangerz any less of a disjointed mess than Miley’s tumultuous personal life.
Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven
It’s early. I’m sitting at my desk listening to R Plus Seven, drinking not-quite-coffee from The Peak’s brand new percolator. I’m alone and overtired. This office, so often filled with the frantic din of student journalists, has a silent, almost churchlike quality when it’s empty.
Jotting down the occasional note to myself, I’m enraptured by the album’s peculiar brilliance. It’s a singularly strange soundtrack to my lonely Thursday morning.
Daniel Lopatin, the man behind Oneohtrix Point Never, has always been willing to play with ideas of what music can be — his previous record, 2011’s wonderful Replica, was pieced together entirely from 80s commercial jingles. R Plus Seven is harder to describe: each of the album’s 10 tracks eschew format and structure, exploring a sound or vocal sample to its apex and then veering towards another.
There are occasional bursts of eclectic brilliance and long ambient passages connecting them, like an unfinished symphony written on a thrift store synthesizer.
Considering how often Lopatin is accused of over-intellectualizing music, R Plus Seven is remarkable in its spontaneity. The freeform jazz influences and music concrète sound collages of the LP’s more experimental passages are a change of pace from Replica’s restless circumlocution.
Lopatin’s fascination with primordial synthesizers is still in full form on tracks like “Problem Areas” and opener “Boring Angels,” which play like a post-modern interpolation of a John Hughes soundtrack. For an album so unconcerned with any overarching theme or sentiment, R Plus Seven is surprisingly cinematic in tone.
It’s later, now: coworkers and hangers-on have begun to trickle into their office chairs to prepare for the day, and the album’s tonal ingenuity has been confined to my headphones. But if anything, this only serves to exaggerate its appeal; R Plus Seven is a world all on its own, and one that I have had the immense pleasure of visiting.
Bjork – Homogenic
Björk is on the outside looking in. She interprets electronic music in the same way that she interprets the English language — from a 90-degree angle, sewing together disparate threads like an impressionistic seamstress.
In the aftermath of her sophomore album Post, which won her unprecedented acclaim and celebrity status, Björk did what any introvert would: she fled. In the furthest recesses of her extraterrestrial mind, she plotted her retaliation, note by note.
Homogenic is the result of Björk’s self-imposed exile, an album full of contradictions: nature versus technology, fiction versus reality, optimism versus melancholy. Each song seems to shed light on some universal aspect of human nature, while simultaneously focusing on the minute details of the singer’s own personal life.
Gone are the inviting string arrangements of Post and the almost-pop of Debut. From the galloping drum machine opening of “Hunter,” Homogenic immediately announces itself as a work of art, difficult and tempestuous even by Björk’s standards.
But there’s also beauty to be found in the album’s industrial tundra atmosphere. “Unravel,” a love song repurposed as a warped fairytale, features some of Björk’s most beautifully organic vocals, while “All Is Full of Love” serves as a hopeful epilogue to the LP’s emotive parallelograms. The seamless marriage of subtle strings and abstract electronic beats throughout Homogenic punctuate the singer’s expressive intonation, in flux between the natural world and the one inside Björk’s Casio keyboard.
Björk’s vertical career trajectory ended with Homogenic as precipitously as it began. Each of her subsequent efforts have felt like admirable footnotes, intent on recapturing the glacial perfection of her third and best LP. It’s hard to blame her — every self-respecting singer-songwriter in the twenty-first century has, in their own way, been trying to do the same.
