The great thing about being a pop duo that treats genres like a toddler treats Legos is that even your mistakes are fascinating. Such is the case with Twenty One Pilots' Blurryface, the fourth album by Ohioan road warriors Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun, and the follow-up to their 2013 breakout, Vessel. In a pop landscape where the term "hot mess" has gone from pejorative to prerequisite, Twenty One Pilots stand out. Blurryface is about as hot as a mess can get without becoming a toxic spill -- even its missteps are a gas.
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One new musical left-turn stands out: Blurryface is brimming with reggae. "Ride," "Polarize" and "Lane Boy" all take King Tubby-inspired dub detours; the lattermost becomes especially schizoid, as Joseph frenetically sing-raps over double-time dub before the song explodes into a spastic drum'n'bass confection. "Honest, there's a few songs on this record that feel common," he raps, but this isn't one of them.