Review: It’s messy and crazy and deep—Kesha returns roaring

Kesha, “High Road” Kesha’s new album starts out on a portentous and soaring note with the singer on the opening song “Tonight” in full Broadway mode, belting out “Take me out toooonniiiigghht.” But 40 seconds in, it dissolves into a messy club banger complete with random expletives, crowd screams, a lost phone and the singer high and drunk as she readies to hit the town. Kesha can go from quietly singing about a lover’s alienation with a revered Beach Boy to “Birthday Suit,” a horny, cornball ditty that uses ‘80s video game sounds to seduce a lover. It wouldn’t be a Kesha record without some funny recorded vignettes — in one, the Spice Girls are gently mocked — or bizarre songs that are strangely addictive, like the utterly oddball, tuba-led “Potato Song.” That’s not to mean she can’t drop the zaniness and deliver a devastating emotional punch, as she does in “Father Daughter Dance,” a heartbreaking ode to living without a parent. She can go from the carefully processed, naughty banger “Kinky” to the stripped-down acoustic twang of “Cowboy Blues.” Her lyrics are often clever throughout: “Don’t circumcise my circumstance,” she sings in one song.