Joanne Review

The idea was to prove she could write without the costume, and the album succeeds at the proof while forgetting to be enjoyable. The title track, about the aunt she never met, is the strongest thing on it, a plain vocal and a plain guitar and no theatre at all. Million Reasons is a well constructed ballad that suited the moment. Diamond Heart opens with promise. But Mark Ronson's production is polite where his best work is sharp, the country and rock signifiers sit on the surface rather than in the songs, and tracks like A Yo and Dancin' in Circles are neither dance records nor rock records but a compromise between the two.

Perfect Illusion is the exception, a genuinely frantic single that the album never follows up. Nothing here is embarrassing and very little is memorable. A necessary correction after a disaster, and a record that mostly works as a sentence in her biography rather than as an hour of music.