MILEY CYRUS - THE TIME OF OUR LIVES EP

(REVIEW FOR APRIL FOOLS ISSUE OF "THE PENGUIN")

Am I allowed two word reviews? If so – sheer exhilaration!



If not, then prepare to listen. On this here EP, Miley seems to abandon those early country-rock leaning (undoubtedly influenced by Uncle Tupelo) and drops the acoustics in favor of slash and burn electric guitars. I mean, listening to the first track “Kicking & Screaming”, I was convinced that she hired Phil Manzanera (the man who played on Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) to play guitar throughout the album. Man, that would’ve been sweet!!!! But she did not. Turns out it’s some other guy, but I actually wouldn’t be surprised if Miley played guitar on the album herself. She’s quite a talented instrumentalist who spends months on end experimenting for the ultimate guitar tone for her little Wal-Mart brand FirstAct guitar.



Another unknown fact about Miley is that she actually has this power (much like Albert Oppenheimer) where she can sing in 4 different voices at the same time, making Auto-Tune non-existent on the entire album. And upon perusing Wikipedia, it appears that other people wrote these songs, but I have to disagree. I mean, what would Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald know about being a 16 year old girl trying to “Party in the U.S.A.”? He was a guitar player in the Saturday Night Live band for crying out loud! And while Hillary Lindsey has written songs for Faith Hill and Taylor Swift, I doubt she understands the heartbreak that Miley conveys in the tear-jerker “When I Look at You”. I mean, c’mon! Everyone knows that if anybody understands the true feelings of love and loss, it’s not going to be Steve Albini, it’s going to be some 16 year old girl who enjoys dancing on top of ice cream trucks.



The rest of the extended play is more of what you expect from her, but that’s not bad because it’s all SO GOOD! Both “The Time of Our Lives” and “Obsessed” are both lyrically witty, instrumentally strong and inventive and able to cut to the core of the American heart. Her lyrics are like a modern day Randy Newman, instead of writing about murderers, she’s writing about boys that she kind of likes, but not “like” likes, just, “likes”, you know? It’s with this you remember that she isn’t just some teenager that has within the same year, drawn criticism from families across the world due to her Vanity Fair photo shoot, candid photos taken in Japan, and the fact that she made this EP exclusive to only Wal-Mart. But me, I’ll stick with Miley thick and thin. It’s not even a guilty pleasure – as long as Albert Oppenheimer and I can dance and sing to these songs days on end, I’ll still reach for my old Hannah Montana 45s and relive all the days that I was a 11 year old girl.



OVERALL RATING – Rainbows and dirtbikes.

KEY TRACKS - Party in the U.S.A., Talk is Cheap, Before the Storm (with the Jonas Brothers)