Perfectly timed to her big night at the VMAs, Miley Cyrus released a surprise, free album on her website; it’s called Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, and, with immediate sounds of 60s-robotism, it seems a complete amalgam of Cyrus and The Flaming Lips— and, lo and behold, it is! Cyrus wrote and recorded with Wayne Coyne/The Lips.(This is not the first oddly spelled, pet-related collaboration between Cyrus and the band, with the pop star first appearing on the band’s album of Sgt. Pepper’s covers, With a Little Help from My Fwends — whose profits helped man’s best “fwends” with donations to a veterinary charity.) Dead Petz also features collaborations with Big Sean and Ariel Pink.
Listening to Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz won’t be the quick, immediately gratifying experience you may expect from a new pop release — perhaps because, as the New York Times reports, it’s not exactly that. The album is a 23-track sonic hallucination, a collection of layered psychedelia that finally sees Cyrus’ visual word matching up with her musical one. And while her last album, Bangerz, cost a “couple million” to make, this only cost around $50,000; it does, however, feature production from Bangerz collaborator Mike Will Made It.
Cyrus explained how this album is more true to her personal aesthetic than her previous pop releases, saying to the Times:
People were like, ‘Well, she’s got some good people twisting the knobs to help her break out.’ Now it’s been long enough where they’re like, ‘No one’s telling her what to do’… What seems like fantasy or trippy, it’s not to me. It’s my actual reality.
As the surprise finale at the VMAs, Cyrus performed the Dead Petz track, “Dooo It!” Obviously, with all the outfits and all the beef, the VMAs provided people with plenty to discuss re: Cyrus, and hopefully the alignment of the wild ceremony and the low-ish budget release won’t draw too much attention away from the latter.
Listen to the album on Soundcloud. Watch the “Dooo It” video, in which Cyrus smokes weed and rubs assorted goops on her face, below: