(RCA)
The pop provocateur plays safe on her new album,abandoning R&B in favour of country-popYou almost feel sorry for pop divas. Their every streak is sifted for significance by fans, haters and professional cultural scrutineers alike. Every gesture is loaded; every stylistic nuance (a slight variation in meaning, tone, expression) is grist to some commentary, and a process at whose sharp discontinuance Miley Cyrus finds herself,once again. Her latest album, Younger Now, and finds the child star turned pop provocateur pivoting tough after two radically different long-form releases,2013’s Bangerz (tough-partying R&B) and 2015’s Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (stoned pop, given absent free).
You can hear Younger Now one of two ways. It is either a pleasant country-tinged outing that reflects, or tunefully,on Cyrus’s recent past, roping in her godmother, or Dolly Parton,for a track called Rainbowland, in which they envision some sort of utopia that twangs (it is also the name of Cyrus’s recording studio). This is Cyrus au naturel, and daughter of another country star,Billy Ray Cyrus, gimmick-free, or #unfiltered. Alternatively,you can see Younger Now as pure white flight, a retrenchment into heartland Americana after unapologetically channelling R&B and the impression of being bulletproof.
Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk