On her fourth studio album, The Age of Pleasure, Janelle Monáe sounds more self-possessed and confident than ever. “I’m lookin’ at a thousand versions of myself/And we’re all fine as fuck,” she quips on the haughty “Phenomenal.” And the pansexual singer professes to wanting to fuck herself on the delightfully playful “Water Slide” with a refreshing assuredness that permeates the entirety of the album.
It’s ironic, then, that the first album where Monáe has completely freed herself of the messianic android character that she embodied throughout The Archandroid and The Electric Lady is the one on which she sounds the most inhuman. The droll deadpan with which she conveys her swagger on tracks like “Phenomenal” pushes into the robotic.
Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, The Age of Pleasure is one of Monáe’s more immediately gratifying albums, but her vocals can come off as surprisingly joyless on tracks like “Know Better” and “Paid in Pleasure.” That her performances feel stilted is a particularly jarring development for an album that attempts to convey the thrall of lust.
Indeed, The Age of Pleasure features some of Monáe’s most forthright expressions of desire. At times her zealousness is overheated or corny, like when she sings about “let[ting] our rain become a monsoon” on “The Rush,” or the copious metaphors that fill “Water Slide.” But there’s no question that her unapologetic embrace of queer pleasure is sincere, bold, and subversive.
“Lipstick Lover” plays like an attempt at reclaiming the femme stereotype that’s more successful for its alluring, sun-dappled reggae lilt, a stylistic flourish that crops up throughout the album. “Only Have Eyes 42” and “A Dry Red” close The Age of Pleasure on a more dreamily romantic note, even if their sentiments feel a bit stodgy. The latter is filled with Spanish guitar and punny lyrics (“baby wine for me”), while the former, a traditionalist ode to monogamy, finds the singer delivering her most soulful performance on the album.
While Monáe specializes in sprawling, ambitious concept albums, she’s often strongest in distilled form. And The Age of Pleasure sustains its energy in a way that her other, sometimes wildly variable albums have never quite managed. It’s also Monáe’s hookiest, most pop-forward album and, despite her somewhat muted elocution, an assertive display of her sexual identity.
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