Miley Cyrus: Endless Summer Vacation Album Review

Cyrus has by no means actually made a terrific front-to-back album—2013’s Bangerz, weirdly, might be most listenable the entire approach by means of—and, with Limitless Summer time Trip, “no skips” stays out of attain. A run of understated early tracks, largely produced by Harry’s Home collaborators Child Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, is interrupted by the interminable Concord Korine co-write “Handstand,” the form of grooveless synth dirge that helped 2015’s Flaming Lips collaboration Miley Cyrus and Her Lifeless Petz sink like a stone. “Handstand” is constructed round a heavy-handed boat metaphor that by no means appears to go wherever, and confoundingly introduces a personality referred to as Huge Twitchy, a continuing presence in Korine’s work. It feels as if, after exercising the form of restraint that’s uncommon throughout her catalog, Cyrus lastly let herself slip again into senseless extra. 

Cyrus has mentioned Limitless Summer time Trip is loosely divided into “AM” and “PM” sections, and it’s the nighttime songs, roughly starting with “Handstand,” that grate. “Wildcard” unsuccessfully retreads the “I’m broken” regretfulness of “You” with much less panache; “Muddy Toes,” a leaden collaboration with Sia, goals for powerful speak and largely lands at awkward. A decade on, Cyrus has nonetheless not discovered an interesting method to sing the phrase “I’ma,” and the track describes a dishonest companion with a maddening mixture of vagueness and ultra-specificity.

Certainly, a seek for any of those songs brings up dozens of tabloid articles purporting to clarify how they relate to Cyrus’ private life. Fortunately, a lot of the album doesn’t gasoline the impulse to invest. On its finest songs, such because the vampy and lascivious “River,” Cyrus successfully showcases who she is at this level in her profession: Mature however nonetheless messy, not above a theatrical flip of phrase (“You’re pourin’ down, child, drown me out”) and, very often, nonetheless in tune with the big-hearted optimism that characterised her earlier music. “You can be the one, have the respect of my infants,” she sings. “Hope they’ve your eyes and that crooked smile.” Thrown into the center of a horned-up dance jam, it comes as a shock. A little bit like Limitless Summer time Trip—which isn’t the sundazed social gathering document that was promised however an exploration of the way it feels when the social gathering’s over.