Album Review: Noah Cyrus, I Want My Loved Ones To Go With Me

While big sister Miley morphed from pre-teen TV star to country-pop sensation, 25-year-old Noah has taken a more circumspect route. She embraces the torch and twang she inherited from father Billy Ray, but channels it down a more alt-country, Americana route than her older sibling.

This second solo album showcases Noah’s lyrical talent, but won’t make easy listening for Cyrus’ parents. ‘What’s It All For?’ distills a lifetime of family strife into just two minutes and 20 seconds: “Why have a family if it ain’t what you want? / Why have a child you don’t know how to love?”

On the searing ‘Way Of The World’, a duet with Nashville star Ella Langley, the singer admits: “As you’re growing up, you get faced with the truth / That your parents are people and messed up like you / And the child inside them is broken and still hurting too”.

Noah enlists help from alt-country royalty, including Fleet Foxes, who join her on the beautiful folk-tinged balladry of ‘Don’t Put It All On Me’, and the great Bill Callahan, on ‘XXX’. The latter may seem like an unlikely pairing but it’s not the first time this odd couple have collaborated, having combined forces on Richard Russell's project, Everything Is Recorded, after the former Smog singer named the younger Cyrus as somebody he really wanted to write for. Their work here is brilliant, the gravel-voiced Callahan proving himself the anti-Dylan with the opening line, “I don’t contain multitudes, I can barely contain anything”.

Don’t dismiss Noah Cyrus because of her surname; I Want My Loved Ones… is proof of a very real, genuine talent.

7.5/10

Out now