Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz

If you can force yourself to slog through the bullshit and actually pay close attention to the album, you’ll emerge from the experience interested and engaged.

It’s bloated, self-indulgent and occasionally cringey – but never boring. A couple of tracks are up with the best of 2015.

Most of Dead Petz sounds pretty much like the Lips' latter-day output — she aims for Coyne-like high notes that don't suit her lowdown voice. But she scores wacko successes like "Milky Milky Milk," "Cyrus Skies" and "Slab of Butter (Scorpion)," along with cameos from Big Sean, Ariel Pink and producer Mike Will Made It.

Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz needs an editor, but there's more than enough worthwhile music here to transcend shock value.

Make no mistake, some of this album is unlistenable ... But Cyrus is also too skilled of an artist to not place some beauty inside this madness.

The playful experimentalism and inherently subversive nature of Dead Petz is enjoyable (in a sickly-sweet way) throughout, yet it’s experimentation is akin to playing absent-mindedly with a shitty synthesizer iPhone app.

It’s ... undoubtedly the most interesting and substantial thing Cyrus has ever done, an absolute beast of an album with twenty three tracks that sometimes hit, sometimes miss and sometimes transcend either category and just become a portal to the weird.

It’s a messy, deeply personal move that finds Cyrus unabashedly putting forth an unapologetically full-fledged reinvention of self, one lacking in timidity and subtlety.

On Petz, the total lack of unpredictability is what betrays Cyrus’ true lack of imagination, her fatal flaw as a Youth Culture Messiah.

If Bangerz saw an ex-Disney star reveling in her newfound freedom from long hair and adult supervision, then Dead Petz sees Cyrus revel in her own freedom from good taste.

Dead Petz is just more mannered than it tries to appear on the surface, too long, and doesn't end up shaking up much of anything, let alone the artistic ambitions of Cyrus or The Flaming Lips.