MUSIC REVIEWs

MILEY CYRUS

Album: “Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz”

Grade: B-

At 92 minutes, the new Miley Cyrus album is really long, a double album by old-school standards that’ll take up more of your time than a Serena Williams tennis match. (Although not as long as the Cyrus-hosted MTV Video Music Awards, thank God.)

And for sure, the 23-song set — featuring 14 in collaboration with psychedelic popsters Wayne Coyne & the Flaming Lips, and a bunch more involving Bangerz producer Mike Will Made It — does contain its share of indulgent stretches, most of which involve the 22-year-old former Hannah Montana going on about how drunk, high, and horny she is.

The album is available as a free streaming download at mileycyrus.com/andherdeadpetz. So it is free from any pressure to please the pop marketplace. Yet the album is still, even at its most willfully experimental, far from the formless affair you might expect. In fact, there’s plenty of compelling music, starting with “Karen Don’t Be Sad,” a full-of-feeling ballad that would have been right at home on a prime Flaming Lips album.

—Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

Lizz Wright

Album: “Freedom & Surrender”

Grade: B

Lizz Wright effortlessly straddles genres, with soul, folk, jazz, and gospel prominent in the mix — even though she has a penchant for covers of rock songs by the likes of Neil Young and Led Zeppelin. Her albums often stress one style within the seductive melange: 2003’s “Salt” and 2005’s “Dreaming Wide Awake” identified as jazz; her previous album, 2010’s “Fellowship,” was full of gospel standards.

The new “Freedom & Surrender” is Wright’s most soulful record. It’s a warm, thoughtful, slow-burning set featuring originals such as the amorous “Right Where You Are” (a duet with Gregory Porter) and the funky “Freedom.” And her covers still impress. She turns Nick Drake’s “River Man” and the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” into restrained, sexy, slow jams.

—Steve Klinge, Philadelphia Inquirer