POP/ROCK

Lady Gaga, "Chromatica" (Interscope)

After detours to jazz standards with Tony Bennett and the movies with Bradley Cooper, Gaga makes her inevitable return to pop music. While "Chromatica" lacks the scenery-chewing adventurousness of her best work, it's her finest and most consistent album since 2011's "Born This Way."

"Chromatica" gallops through virtually every EDM subgenre of the past 30 years, but does not linger. Almost every track clocks in at around three minutes, a formula for maximal streaming success.

That it feels at all cohesive is a credit to Gaga and her co-executive producer BloodPop, who heads a team that includes Max Martin, Skrillex and exactly one female producer out of a dozen.

Gaga told Apple Music's Zane Lowe that "Chromatica" is informed by her mental health battles and the residual trauma of a past sexual assault. It's a dance-through-the-pain collection of what the British call "sad bangers" — a club album when there are no clubs, the isolation at its mournful heart couldn't be more suited to the moment.

"Chromatica" divides itself into three parts. The first houses many of the singles, including "Stupid Love," an electro-disco stomper that raids Gaga's own catalog for inspiration, and "Rain on Me," an expert collaboration with Ariana Grande.

Part 2 serves up several of the album's greatest tracks: "Sour Candy," a collaboration with K-pop girl group Blackpink; the cyborgian funk exercise "911"; the claustrophobic, dysfunctional "Replay."

"Chromatica" doesn't have a single slow song or bend-the-knee imperial pop. It's the only Lady Gaga album that could stand to be more grandiose. The album flags slightly in its final third, when its mildness starts to wear. On the joyous synth explosion "Sine From Above," guest vocalist Elton John seems like an afterthought. The shambolic, euphoric closer "Babylon" is Gaga at her most comfortably Gaga-esque, poaching from "Immaculate Collection"-era Madonna and meta-commenting on her own fame.

Allison Stewart, Washington Post

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