Album: Madonna

American Life, Maverick

The problem with being an icon willingly participating in an industry dealing mostly with surfaces, as Madonna seems to have discovered, is that at some point your underlying humanity wants to assert itself, to present you as more than just a brand name with a series of slick presentation ideas. The true horror, though, must be to give in to that urge, only to find out that there's not much of interest lurking behind those carefully styled images: that you are, indeed, essentially just a brand.

Madonna has always been peerless at the surface stuff but whenever she has delved deeper into her psyche, there has not seemed much there beyond some hokey clichés about religion, parents and sex. What, then, should we expect of American Life, loudly trumpeted as Madonna's most "personal" album yet? A hitherto unrevealed interest in epistemology, perhaps? Or more "revelations" about religion, parents and sex? Well, what do you think?

As it happens, there's not an awful lot of sex involved here – but then, one suspects there's not actually all that much left to reveal at this late stage. The religious and parental themes, however, are stronger than ever, with references to Jesus Christ and "Satan's game", and her lapsed attitude affirmed by the assertion that "there is no resurrection". The track "Mother and Father" covers both themes; a belated and embarrassing public catharsis of the five-year-old Madonna's maternal bereavement, it features an oddly mechanical rap section, as of a small child, perhaps, or an adult steeling themselves against painful memories.

It's not the worst rap here, though; that dubious honour surely goes to the one on "American Life" itself, in which she outlines her daily routine before sabotaging her new-age attitude by listing her employees, like some lady of the manor swanking it over the plebs. Elsewhere, Madonna waxes ambivalent about Hollywood, admits she used to live "in a tiny bubble" (used to?), in "I'm So Stupid", and professes inscrutability as only a global megastar can in "Nobody Knows Me".

Musically, Madonna has always been heavily reliant on her collaborators, and this second outing with Mirwais Ahmadzai follows much the same lines as Music, with twitchy techno synths and close-miked acoustic guitar figures riding his massive stomping kick-drums and hustling hi-hats – nowhere better than on "Hollywood", which builds up the requisite freeway momentum as it proceeds. But these are riffs, rather than melodies; chants, rather than songs. And for a supposedly intimate, revealing album, it all sounds a bit too synthetic and impersonal, a touch too eager to hammer home her new-found sensitivity.