Mayhem Review

The pitch was a return to the dark electro pop of her first two albums, and what arrived is broader and better than that. Abracadabra is the obvious centrepiece, a nonsense chant over a hammering beat that revives the exact trick that made Bad Romance work, and it does not feel like nostalgia because the production around it is meaner and more textured than anything from that era. Disease is genuinely nasty.

Garden of Eden runs on a disco bassline with real swing. Killah is the most fun she has sounded in fifteen years. Perfect Celebrity turns fame back into a subject with some actual bite in it, which the debut never managed. The writing is still built from big gestures rather than fine detail and one or two ballads sag near the end. But the album moves, it is confident about being pop rather than defensive about it, and it plays end to end without a dead patch. A late career record with nothing to prove and plenty to give.