5/10 stars. Miley Cyrus – The Time Of Our Lives (Monday November 9, 2009 7:20 PM ) Released on 09/11/09, Label: Polydor. In the wildly popular children’s TV series “Hannah Montana”, Miley Cyrus’ character lives a double life: superstar by night and schoolgirl by day. Appropriately enough, this brief new album also has a split personality: on four of the songs Cyrus is a brilliantly feisty skate pop dynamo, while on the other four she’s a balladeer so tedious you would welcome a nice coma as a change of pace.

It’s the fact that the uptempo numbers are so winning that makes the slow ones so brain-gnawingly depressing. Bubblegum pop rock is a tricky thing to pull off without sounding either contrived or uncomfortable, but on songs like the fizzy, addictive title track or the glittery hook-fest that is “Talk Is Cheap”, Cyrus sounds utterly convincing and energised, like Avril Lavigne with charm or Katy Perry without the queasy self-satisfaction.

It helps that on the upbeat songs, Cyrus’ voice is as irrepressible as her attitude, able to inject even the most mundane lyrics with real zest. So although her idea of hell-for-leather hedonism mostly seems to involve waving her hands in the air, Cyrus can make the prospect sound genuinely invigorating. Sadly, no voice could redeem a song as flatulent as “Obsessed”, so ponderous that it makes teenage lust sound as thrilling and all-consuming as sorting out socks in a Scunthorpe launderette.

Still, that song is “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in comparison to the lousy “The Climb”, a dour grab bag of self-help clichés about life being a mountain and a battlefield, wrapped in hoary music which certainly makes you feel like it is. Astoundingly, “The Climb” is not the worst song here, an honour which must be reserved for “Before The Storm”, a death-paced live duet with the Jonas Brothers which somehow sounds even grizzlier than it looks on paper.

Fortunately for Cyrus, these songs flee your brain cells within seconds of their final chords, which means you’re more likely to remember the breezily brilliant hit “Party In The USA” or the trash-rocker “Kicking And Screaming”, with its glam guitar riffing and ragged, gutsy vocal. If Cyrus gets a little more serious about her music, instead of churning out records in between acting, modelling and launching clothing lines, she might make a great pop album. As it is, “The Time Of Our Lives” is a great pop EP drowning in a sea of bilge.

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