“Mayhem” review: Lady Gaga wants to have a party like in 2009

Over the past few months, however, Gaga has achieved a huge success in her sixth pop LP (if relatively anonymous), and has made her predictions with two of the chart-topping Bruno Mars duets, “Die in Smile,” and two of the most intensely hit singles of the decade. Latex tight dance floor spells with the chorus where she finds herself speaking in tongues like the high priest of her own self-referential religion: “Abracadabra, Amorona/Abracadabra Mortaogagaga.” Of course, it's a cleverly executed sequel to her 2009 smash “Bad Romance,” with a splendidly hedonistic “garden” playing in Skronky, just like the next track, as she went on an even more vivid return to the club she visited with her first hit “Just Dance.”

Through its 14 tracks, “Mayhem” dances at the boundary between clever self-referentiality and less inspirational rehashing. The corrosive “perfect celebrity” nevertheless is a sonic highlight that goes against the album's theme and lyrical limitations, returning to one of her favorites, and now a tired topic: damage done by fame. Opening Line – “I'm made of plastic like a doll” – a wink throwback to the “Chromatica” truck “plastic doll” or a bit of a recycled image?

For the first time since the 2013 Bacchanal “Artpop” semi-final, Lady Gaga commits to the over-over-over with the clenched beliefs that made her a star in the first place. She sounds trapped throughout “Mayhem” even between the most mid- and suspicious material that starts with the eighth truck and is carried through the second half. The mid-tempo “Loverag” gets lost in lyrical clichés, and the slow-running electroballad “The Beast” feels clearly written for its placement in the trailer of the erotic thriller heading for streaming that is instantly forgotten (although Gaga sings it the same way).

Still, her risky moves usually pay off. “Killah,” an outre collaboration with French DJ and producer Gesaffelstein, stretches the sex death-related minor phors to a truly ridiculous extreme, but Gaga absorbs like an even more cartoonish version of David Bowie circa “Young Americans,” giving it a goofy urgency that's hard to resist.

“Mayhem” has lots of superficial gore and massacre, many of which are fun and campy, like the throwback “Zombie Boy” of Light Disco's “Holaback Girl,” but the underlying conflict of the album is internal. In a detailed choreographed video of “Abracadabra,” two opposing Gagas Wrestles work for control. The other women are shadowy self, in the pain of “What a bad thing?”