Kim Petras: Feed the Beast album review — moreish but muddled

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Is Kim Petras ready for her close-up? Feed the Beast is the German singer’s major-label debut, the next step in her bid to swap cult stardom for top-tier celebrity. It follows her first chart hit guesting on Sam Smith’s “Unholy”, which also brought her a place in the history book as the first openly transgender artist to top the US singles chart and win a Grammy award.

“It’s time to let me off the leash,” she declares on her album’s opening song, which is also its title track. Sinewy and crisp, it goes for the jugular with precisely engineered bubblegum-pop, the very definition of moreishness. But its brief run-time and snippety feel point to problems ahead.

Feed the Beast is clear-eyed about the nature of the beast, namely Petras’s appetite for mainstream fame. But it proves less sure about how to feed it. At issue is the extent to which the singer’s trashy, campy, bawdy image — witness last year’s EP Slut Pop, an absurdly overdriven exercise in earwormy “sex positivity” — needs smoothing for mass palatability.

Her first attempt was an unfinished album called Problématique, canned last year. Its title alluded to Petras’s controversial association with the producer Lukasz Gottwald, aka Dr Luke, who has been accused by the singer Kesha of sexual assault. Her claims were dismissed by a New York court in 2016; Gottwald’s defamation case against Kesha is due to be heard next month.

In the absence of legal judgment against him, his presence on Feed the Beast with other producers and writers strikes me as dubious but legitimate: Nicki Minaj, who features on lead single “Alone”, is among the big-name stars who also work with him. But Dr Luke’s involvement adds to the sense of pressure bearing down on these tonally muddled songs.

Winners such as brazen electropop banger “King of Hearts” point to what might have been. But they’re outnumbered by dance-pop dullards like “Castle in the Sky”. Chart-friendly folderol about broken hearts is unconvincing, while maladroit switches to racier fare culminate in the ham-fisted innuendo of “Coconuts”, a shoo-in for worst lyrics of the year. No: Petras isn’t ready for her close-up.

★★☆☆☆

‘Feed the Beast’ is released by Republic Records/Amigo Records