Miley Cyrus‘ eighth studio album arrives on a cloud of thriller, which is uncommon for an artist who isn’t precisely the shy and retiring kind. Cyrus is a straight-talker who is generally sport for amusing on the promo circuit, however since co-hosting a televised New Yr’s Eve particular together with her godmother Dolly Parton, she has stored a curiously low profile and even stayed quiet on social media. Till its week of launch, all we actually knew about ‘Infinite Summer season Trip’ is what Cyrus tells us on the chart-conquering ‘Flowers’, its inescapable and essentially self-possessed lead single: “I can love me higher than you may.”
If ‘Flowers’ finds Cyrus rebuilding herself after a break-up – “We had been proper ’til we weren’t / Constructed a house and watched it burn” – then the album looks like a messier, extra advanced extension of this course of. On the dreamy ‘Rose Coloured Lenses’, she appears again at the most effective days of a relationship when “in some way the mattress sheets are soiled like sticky candy lemonade”. However the fierce ‘Muddy Ft’, which options Sia on backing vocals and sounds somewhat like Lana Del Rey jamming with Kings of Leon circa-2016, finds Cyrus wronged and combating again: “And also you scent like fragrance that I didn’t buy / Now I do know why you’ve been closing the curtains / Get the fuck out of my home!” Cyrus’ ire is totally riveting.
‘You’, a bar room ballad that appears to be a few rebound relationship, may even be learn as a rejection of heteronormative expectations. “I’m not made for no horsey and carriage,” sings Cyrus, a queer, pansexual lady who was married to actor Liam Hemsworth from 2018 to 2020. Later, on the good, ’80s-influenced synth-pop observe ‘Violet Chemistry’, Cyrus hints that she might not be fully LTR-oriented proper now. “There’s one thing between us that’s too main to disregard,” she sings in a crisp staccato. “Is probably not everlasting however nocturnal, nothin’ extra.”
Musically, ‘Infinite Summer season Trip’ is considered one of Cyrus’ extra subdued efforts, however additionally it is peppered with surprises that recall her brasher earlier eras. ‘Rose Coloured Lenses’, considered one of six songs Cyrus co-wrote with Harry Kinds‘ producers Child Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, climaxes in a psychedelic swirl that seems like one thing from ‘Miley Cyrus & Her Lifeless Petz’, the experimental 2015 album she made with The Flaming Lips. The infectious second single ‘River’, which Cyrus has described as “dancefloor banger” with “nasty” lyrics, looks like a relative of her Stevie Nicks-inspired hit ‘Midnight Sky’. And, in a approach, ‘Violet Chemistry’ is a cooler, extra alt-leaning replace of the bolshy electro-pop sound that Cyrus mined on her underrated 2010 album ‘Can’t Be Tamed’.
Cyrus has known as ‘Infinite Summer season Trip’ her “love letter” to LA, town she moved to as a young person when she landed her career-launching position within the Disney Channel collection Hannah Montana. She has additionally stated the album is split into elements: an ‘AM’ opening portion “representing the morning time, the place there’s a buzz and an vitality and… a possible of recent prospects”, adopted by a ‘PM’ closing part with a “slinky seediness and form of a grime however a glamour on the identical time”. The break up isn’t super-pronounced, however excluding ‘Flowers’, the album’s second half incorporates its most blatant hits. Cyrus is a seasoned genre-hopper, however the beautiful, reggae-flecked ‘Island’ looks like one thing model new for Cyrus.
Usually, the opening stretch finds Cyrus in additional acquainted musical territory. ‘Thousand Miles’ is a country-dappled collaboration with Brandi Carlile; ‘You’ permits her to indicate off her highly effective throaty vocals, and ‘Jaded’ incorporates echoes of ’90s alt-rock anthems like The Cranberries‘ ‘Zombie’, a music that Cyrus has lined prior to now. The album’s main curveball comes proper within the center: ‘Handstand’, a psychedelic fever dream co-written, considerably randomly, by transgressive American movie director Concord Korine. The music’s trippy manufacturing and cryptic lyrics – “It’s such as you noticed an unicorn, you don’t perceive / How I’m doing what I’m doing in a fucking handstand” – really feel like one other nod to ‘Lifeless Petz’ period.
All of it provides as much as an album that holds your full consideration even when it isn’t Cyrus’s boldest or most visionary. ‘Infinite Summer season Trip’ actually looks like an correct reflection of who she is as an artist – and an individual – in 2023. She’s nonetheless understanding what she desires from a relationship. She is aware of she will be able to pull off totally different musical types even when she’s not making an attempt to make bangers (or ‘Bangerz’). And when she sings “However don’t overlook, child I’m a wildcard” on the third-to-last music, you’ll undoubtedly imagine her.
Particulars
- Launch date: March 10, 2023
- Document label: Columbia Data
