Music reviews: Miley Cyrus, Garbage, and Keith Jarrett
★★★
Something Beautiful is "another Miley Cyrus grab bag," veering from dream-pop balladry to clubby R&B to goth rock and more, said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. "That sounds like a criticism, but it's really not." With guest appearances that include Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes and Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Cyrus' ninth album "goes places you would never expect." And despite a second half dominated by electronic dance tracks that waste Cyrus' vocal talents, her "willingness to confound" is welcome when so many other pop acts are content to be predictable. The "very grand claims" Cyrus has made about Something Beautiful ask us to consider it as a grand statement, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. She has called it an attempt to medicate a sick culture and has spun off a film billed as a pop opera that's actually "just a load of pop videos." The music itself, however, is "all very well written and well made," including that club-ready second half. Though a couple of tracks will chart, what this Miley venture lacks is "the kind of obvious smash-hit single by which her albums stand or fall commercially."
★★★
Garbage is "alt-rock royalty," and the band's eighth album reaffirms as much, said Neil Z. Yeung in AllMusic. "Confident and driven," it's "a potent rallying cry" for the fight against impending darkness, whether that's mortality or the erosion of American democracy. The songs were created when singer Shirley Manson, 58, was recovering from a second hip-replacement surgery, adding lyrics to her bandmates' instrumental tracks. The result is an album fueled by the quartet's "signature" blend of "jagged guitar riffs, elastic bass, precision drumming, and electronic-kissed atmospherics," all held together by "Manson's inimitable vocals." Since reuniting in 2010, this band born in the 1990s has issued "one rock-solid album after the next," said Andrew Sacher in Brooklyn Vegan. This one's "certainly fresh enough" to be mistaken for the work of the younger artists Manson has inspired, including Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo. While the record mines Garbage's "darker industrial side," Manson has made a point of moving on from 2021's No Gods No Masters by lacing her lyrics with more hope. "We could all use a little more of that energy right now."
★★★★
Is a fourth album harvested from a single 2016 European concert tour "too much of a good thing?" asked Mike Gates in UK Vibe. "Not when it's Keith Jarrett." New Vienna arrives as the celebrated pianist, who ceased performing after suffering strokes in 2018, turns 80 and observes the 50th anniversary of his landmark Köln Concert album. The performance recorded in an 1870 Vienna concert hall finds him "in spirited mood, shaping new music in the moment," music that's meaningfully different from what he played at other stops on the tour. This is Jarrett "in his perfect element: simply improvising the moment he takes the bench," said Michael Toland in The Big Takeover. Stringing together nine short pieces, he "hits onevery aspect of his multifaceted playing," opening with a blitz of staggering notes, then paying tribute to Viennese composers Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg with the "lush chords" of Part II. Part VIII's "bluesy runs and finger-snapping rhythm" take us "from the concert hall to the bawdy house." He closes with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," showing an inspiring ability to "draw new feeling out of familiar notes."
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