Miley Cyrus is defiant, Van Morrison mines his youth – the week’s best albums
Miley Cyrus, Endless Summer Vacation ★★★★☆
The bittersweet disco of Flowers has become the inescapable hit of the year so far, number one in 35 countries and at the top of global streaming charts for two months straight. The smoky tones of Miley Cyrus have never sounded so perfectly framed as on this defiant glide across an empty dancefloor, a post-divorce anthem of redemptive liberation that shares DNA with Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. One might pontificate that its solipsistic message (“I can love me better than you”) is perfectly suited to our narcissistic selfie age, or you can simply revel in the joy of dancing like no one is watching. Even though, in Cyrus’s case, everyone probably is.
Endless Summer Vacation is Cyrus’s 8th or 13th studio album, depending on whether you count her output under her Disney alter ego Hannah Montana. The daughter of country crossover star Billy Ray Cyrus (of Achy Breaky Heart fame), Miley made her TV debut in 2001. She has been household name famous for two decades and is still only 30 years old, yet her career has sometimes looked like she is pinballing erratically around pop’s penny arcade rather than following any kind of masterplan. Cyrus’s output has encompassed everything from experimental hip hop to snarling rock via country power ballads, twerking controversies, lung-busting karaoke covers and duets with an astonishingly wide range of artists, from Wu Tang Clan rapper GhostfaceKillah to Cyrus’s godmother Dolly Parton. And then there was the 2015 psychedelic concept album about beloved dead pets (literally Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz) made with alt rock mavericks The Flaming Lips.
Flowers has just delivered Cyrus her biggest hit since she figuratively demolished her American sweetheart image by swinging naked across video screens on 2013’s Wrecking Ball. It seemed to signal a new maturity, as if the rebellious former child star was finally assuming the long-predicted mantle of dance pop superstar. For better or worse, the accompanying album suggests Cyrus is not quite ready to settle yet.
Created with the usual over-inflated teams of co-writers and producers (including Harry Styles collaborator Kid Harpoon and ubiquitous pop master Greg Kurstin), just over half of the album’s 12 tracks offer up streamlined pop on themes of recovering from a broken relationship (with gossipy commentators speculating on connections to her 2019 divorce from actor Liam Hemsworth). If none quite equal the sophisticated perfection of Flowers, there is plenty to be enjoyed in the shimmering songcraft of Jaded, slinky pop rock crawl of Rose Colored Lenses, country tinged yearning of Thousand Miles, sexy old school rhythm ‘n blues swagger of You, throbbing synth pop of Wildcard and lonely tropical groove of Island. This, one imagines, is the album her record company would have liked her to make.
But listeners seduced by Miley’s new maturity will also have to negotiate the disconcerting contortions of latest single River and James Blake collaboration Violet Chemistry, oddball EDM- anthems with an undeniable dancefloor rush despite their tendency to flicker between squelchy video game sounds and out of kilter hip hop breaks. The alternately sensuous and startling psychedelic miasma of Handstand meanwhile finds Cyrus rapping with robotic flatness about unicorns, manta rays and a friend called Big Twitchy. The blues distortions of Sia collaboration Muddy Feet offer a compelling framework for the rawness of Cyrus’s voice when she really lets rip on a song of betrayal, but it is hard to square with the by-the-numbers piano balladry of sweet but obvious sisterhood anthem Wonder Woman.
As an album, Endless Summer Vacation, can’t quite settle on a coherent tone. Nevertheless there is much to be admired in Cyrus’s defiant will to keep messing about on pop’s more eccentric fringes. Indeed, for all the slick but formulaic pleasures of the album’s mainstream pop push, it is arguably that Cyrus is at her most compelling when she dances like no one is watching. Neil McCormick
Van Morrison, Moving On Skiffle ★★★★☆
Author of both the mid-’60s garage-punk nugget, Gloria, and the improvised hippie-era jazz-rock suite, Astral Weeks, Van Morrison, has beaten a somewhat erratic path across the ensuing decades, happy to adopt the stance of the scowling outsider in his exploration of early 20th-century traditional musics.
A year or two ago, he alienated even his most adoring fans with a series of digitally released protest anthems against Northern Ireland’s Covid-19 lockdown policy, which he claimed sought to “enslave” the public based on “crooked facts”, and which saw him trade legal suits with Health Minister Robin Swann.
On approximately his 42nd solo album, the cantankerous 77-year-old sprinkles petrol on that combustible situation by rendering the jazz/blues standard Mama Don’t Allow, with the amended title, Gov Don’t Allow, its lyrics asserting that he’ll perform any time he pleases, and that, “they don’t allow anybody to say what they want, but they’re not gonna stop me rant!”
Otherwise, as per title, Moving On Skiffle reverts to the relatively safe ground of mining the sounds of his youth in mid-’50s Belfast. Morrison often talks of how he’d discovered Lead Belly and American folk in his early teens, when suddenly Lonnie Donegan hit the charts with Lead Belly’s Rock Island Line, prompting a boom in skiffle – Britain’s uniquely homespun twist on rock ‘n’ roll, deploying washboard percussion and tea-chest bass in the place of real instruments.
The 23 songs here, however, may’ve first come to Van’s attention in that period, but he re-arranges them sumptuously with rock guitar/bass/drums, Appalachian fiddle, Hammond organ, boogie-woogie piano and his own parping sax, as well as a veritable army of male and female backing singers. The latter bring strong flavours of gospel and doo wop, while elsewhere skiffle’s roots in blues, bluegrass, folk and early rock ‘n’ roll are laid bare, intertwined and often inseparable.
Morrison’s joy in tackling this rich repertoire is palpable: when he secularises the Civil Rights-era gospel favourite, This Little Light Of Mine, as “this loving light”, the sheer connective warmth he generates is simply wonderful, and contrasts strongly with his public image.
Best of all, the rolling nine-minute finale, Green Rocky Road, sets him off vocalising in Astral Weeks’ drifty, beyond-mere-words style, crowning this absolute masterclass in rootsy reinvention. Andrew Perry
Nia Archives, Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall ★★★★☆
Combining the newfangled beat breaks of jungle folk hero Jordana with the smouldering yet lovelorn vocals of neo-soul princess Erykah Badu, the music of Nia Archives operates in a unique space, with the Bradford-born singer-songwriter and producer finding a way to pour her heart out in the middle of a sweaty drum and bass tent. Having found her sound during late night electronic parties in squats across Leeds, the 24-year-old artist has been consistently dubbed the chosen one by the British music press, destined to revive raving culture from when jungle music was last at its peak during the 1990s.
This EP's lead single Baianá is a love letter to Brazilian nightlife, as a wicked bass line immediately puts a spring on your step, while That’s The Way Life Goes loses some of the ebullience as Nia opts to intimately carve up her own heart, conceding that “love takes its toll” in an anguished vocal. Nia’s sedate vocals don’t always match the intensity of the blinking hi-hats and fidgety sound system synths that seem to define these raw new tracks, especially on So Tell Me where she calmly sings about being stuck inside her own head amid a busy arrangement.
However, the stunning juxtaposition of gentle and urgent tempos show Nia Archives is moving at her own pace – this is a record of contrasts, made for a generation of young people who don’t know whether to let their hair down or have an existential crisis in the middle of a dancefloor. This EP’s best moment is Conveniency, where things are slowed down with an acoustic guitar and Nia excavates her demons with a conversational falsetto that shares the coarse truths of early Amy Winehouse.
This song hints at an R&B and jazz rap range beyond all the experiments with jungle, and the lyric, “Don’t think you can call me, just because you’re feeling lonely / I can’t just be option number 3”, serves not only as a side-eye to flash Harrys who prey on vulnerable women, but also an assessment of where the artist sees herself artistically. She never wants to be option three ever again, only number one, and Sunrise Bang Your Head Against The Wall offers yet more encouraging signs of the artist’s abilities to reach the summit of UK pop. Thomas Hobbs
Brix Smith Start, Valley of the Dolls ★★★★☆
For many men of a certain age, Brix Smith Start will always be Mrs Mark E Smith, the effusive bottle-blonde guitarist who left California for Prestwich to wed The Fall’s lunatic singer, and to steer his band in a winningly alt-pop direction through the mid-’80s.
As was cautionarily detailed in Brix’s 2016 autobiography, The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise, the rest of her life has often been about recovering from the trauma of those years, including entirely switching profession as a boutique owner, and then recording three albums with other ex-Fall members under the name Brix & The Extricated, in the hope of achieving closure.
The therapy, however, is still ongoing on this solo debut, as opener Living Thru My Despair finds Smith Start revisiting “Manchester, my old hometown,” and painful memories of her first marriage (“empty speed wraps on the sink, the amber liquid that you drink – it can’t’ve been every gal’s dream come true”).
Yet, as its title implies, Valley of the Dolls is a summation of her entire life trajectory thus far, since childhood in suburban Los Angeles. California Smile accentuates the positive in making a life in the UK instead of amid the Sunshine State’s empty plasticity, while other tracks (Valley Girl, Aphrodite, etc) reveal a furious feminist awakening.
These urgent personal issues are robustly supported by Brix’s fearsome all-female band (two members are borrowed from ’90s noiseniks My Bloody Valentine, a further two from severe-sounding arrivistes Deux Furieuses). Consequently, the sound is a good deal heavier than her ’60s-worshipping turn-of-the-’90s solo venture, The Adult Net, its potent mixture of bubblegum pop and beefy riffage often recalling The Breeders circa Cannonball, and even, in places, Nirvana’s Nevermind.
Expertly constructed, passionately executed and extremely catchy throughout, Valley of the Dolls is an absolute blast, a wonderfully empowering and energised new beginning for an artist, at 60, still hellbent on fulfilling her musical potential. Andrew Perry
Sleaford Mods, UK Grim ★★★★★
Few bands have captured the political despair of the last decade as singularly as Nottingham duo Sleaford Mods. Their 2007 breakthrough Austerity Dogs was a bleak tableau of life below the poverty line, while 2011’s Eton Alive questioned the lack of empathy of those in power. Lockdown smash Spare Ribs (2021) was a piercing take-down of the government’s handling of the pandemic while their latest, UK Grim, now takes aim at the cost-of-living crisis.
Made up of vocalist Jason Williamson and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Fearn, Sleaford Mods began their musical life on the margins, their style unlike anything heard in the charts before. They largely eschewed melody in favour of stripped-back skittering electro punk and grime, with Williamson’s delivery sitting awkwardly between The Fall’s Mark E. Smith and The Sex Pistols’ John Lydon – part angry singing, part East Midlands dialect-driven sprechgesang. They were both well into their forties when success arrived, but that didn’t stop a whole swathe of younger bands like Dry Cleaning and Yard Act taking the band’s blueprint and making it their own.
UK Grim continues the Sleaford Mods’ documentarian approach to working class Britain and the title track bleakly sets the tone. “In England, no one can hear you scream,” Williamson rages over Fearn’s menacing synths. It’s a dark, Mike Leigh-like snapshot of life in poverty in 2023 as some struggle to survive amid soaring energy and food prices.
“There’s a system and there’s you,” Williamson wearily sighs on the tender kitchen sink drama Apart From You, about living on the breadline and wondering if you’ll ever escape. Meanwhile a desperate character in Tilldipper steals cash from work because he “wants a lifestyle”– a basic one, in which he has “dinner on the table every day.”
On Smash Each Other Up, Williamson observes how community divisions, drawn post-Brexit and post-pandemic, have led to increased violence: “Everybody’s getting well narky / fist fights in Sainsbury’s car park.”
At times, Williamson turns inwards, his tone becoming more confessional as he addresses his past drug and alcohol addiction (Pit To Pit), his difficult relationship with his father (Don) and the struggle to find peace with his childhood (I Claudius). “I’m not gonna mess it up,” he repeats on Pit to Pit, vowing to stay clean.
While these are heavy themes, there are moments of relief via the band’s absurdist humour. On DIWhy, Williamson pokes fun at the “white bloke aggro bands” that have sprung up in Sleaford Mods’ wake. “Excuse me mate! You’ve just dropped one of ya tattoos!”, Williamson imagines yelling at one of them, reducing them to a “Shouty [Fred] Dibnah in an All Saints jacket.” On the dancefloor-ready Trendy, they take aim at oh-so-serious fashionistas and influencers. “Ya got ya Top Gun glasses on upside down!” As ever, Williamson’s language is as playful as it is scathing – his barbed takedowns are frequently joyous.
Sleaford Mods have lost none of their political bite, humour, and astute observational skill. UK Grim will cement their place as one of Britain’s most influential – and successful – UK bands. Elizabeth Aubrey
