Miley Cyrus, Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz - Album review: A startling coming-of-age record from the former child star

Download: Space Boots; BB Talk; Fweaky; 1 Sun; Evil Is But a Shadow

“Yeah I smoke pot, yeah I love beats, but I don’t give a fuck – I ain’t no hippie,” claims Miley Cyrus on “Dooo It!”, the opening track of this huge, sprawling, wayward album. It’s a mission statement whose essentially brattish attitude lays down markers for the former child star chafing angrily against the expectations and duties of celebrity. Not that the project is exactly short of hippies, being largely recorded with her new BFFs The Flaming Lips, whose lysergic charge resonates throughout much of its 90 minutes.

Released as a free download, Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz is at once a grand folly and a brave proclamation of her determination to follow her muse wherever it leads. It’s also one of the most honest, at times embarrassingly open, accounts of a female pop star’s inner life and sexual appetite. Tracks such as “Bang Me Box” (really!) and “Fweaky” are frank expressions of carnal desire, from the former’s phallocentric fascination to the latter’s lustful urges: but they’re not expressed in an aggressive, hip-hop way – instead, there’s a languid, sensual mood to Miley’s erotic musings that’s enticingly effective, the singer making full use of her appealing low-register and warm timbre.

Sex is one of several themes that intertwines throughout the album, along with recurrent interests in space, drugs, dead animals, and especially the sun – more than once, sunrise is regarded with sadness, notably in “The Floyd Song”, where banked harmonies swirl in cathedral-sized reverb over acoustic guitar and fizzy psychedelic flourishes. “The sunrise insists on gladness, but how can I be glad when my flower is dead?” she asks, referring to one such departed pet. Later, she comes close to (crocodile?) tears in “Pablow the Blowfish”, recounting her regret “watching my friends eating my friends” in a sushi bar.

The album combines productions by Mike Will Made It and Oren Yoel with those co-produced by herself and the Lips, which tend to have a messier, glitchier, more extempore sound. Yoel’s “Space Boots” is a highlight, with sad sunshine warmed by someone “so cool in your spacesuit, your space boots, oh space dude” . It’s sweet, funny and touching in an unexpected way, as is “BB Talk”, her impassioned complaint about a lover’s icky sentiments, which seem to carry symbolic memories of the teen schlock she was required to spout as Hannah Montana.

Which hints at the main theme of the project, Miley’s emancipation, pursued through sex, drugs and musical freedom. Once again wielding the husky appeal of her low register, “Cyrus Skies” touches on truth, death and sunrise as she proclaims “I’ve been alive, but I’ve been a liar” – a cogent expression of her blossoming character. And “1 Sun”, another Yoel production, refers to strong female precursors Grace Jones and Beyoncé as models for her progress.

Part of that growth involves indulgence in throwaway filler experiments like “Fuckin’ Fucked Up” and “Miley Tibetan Bowlzzz” (Miley moaning over string drones); and at times, the album almost disappears in a psychedelic miasma. But the thematic strands, and the reappearance of certain musical motifs in different songs, impose a continuity that just about holds the project together through the changes in style and producer. Ultimately, there’s something genuinely courageous and admirable about Cyrus’s ambitions with Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz. Sure, it’s way too long, and flamboyantly self-indulgent; but it’s free, and it’s fun.