The problem is, there’s just so much going on. “Lights Up” and “The Mask” have striking melodies (and, on “Lights Up,” a beautiful piano part from Tommy King), yet can’t develop them, as if fearing they’ll lose interest if they stick on one idea and one volume for too long. Maybe this is intentional given the album’s themes, but the unpredictable starts to feel predictable when every quiet moment sounds like a crescendo is about to erupt. The constant shapeshifting nearly torpedoes a would-be standout like the Fiona Apple co-write “Feel It” (“Fuck me, don’t fix me, excite me with safety”). The mesmerizing side-chained synths and syncopated melodies of the early choruses give way to a diffuse second half, and the song runs out of steam with more than a minute to go.
Delevingne and Burton take lots of risks, and many pay off, but they’ve skipped a few steps on the way to making an experimental opus. The thing about Apple’s music—one of Delevingne’s formative influences—is that however weird she gets, underneath the caustic, cerebral lyrics, there’s a love of old-school Cole Porter and Gershwin songwriting that roots her in that Great American Songbook sensibility. Not Normal is most fun when, on the title track, Delevingne dispenses with the chilly distortion and hams it up like a Disney villain. It’s a weird moment, and yet the clichés about humans just “trying to get by” land because there’s an earnestness the rest of the album is too afraid to embrace. When, on the genuinely soaring “Crazy, Baby,” Delevingne goes, “I’m sorry, this is a love song,” it’s emblematic of a record that’s both achingly vulnerable and never truly lets its guard down.