‘Ask yourself this – what are you doing it for? / Is it for you? Is it for them?” ponders Madonna during Bring Your Love, a collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter from Confessions II. It’s a question you could ask of her decision to release a follow-up to 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor 21 years on.

The official line is, of course, that it’s for her. Confessions II was inspired by Madonna’s 2023 Celebration tour, a rampage through her back catalogue – with staging that recreated the videos for old hits including Don’t Tell Me and Human Nature – that apparently set the singer thinking about her past. Certainly, Confessions II is rich with references to Madonna’s history, and not only the album from which it borrows its title and its initial structure, a sequence of house-influenced tracks that segue into each other like a DJ mix. There’s also the trip-hop-inspired Madonna of Bedtime Stories (the album concludes with a suite of slower, more introspective material); the club-hopping, fame-hungry Madonna of her 1982 debut single Everybody, who keeps cropping up in the lyrics; and the maternal, spiritually inclined Madonna of Ray of Light. The Test, a duet with her daughter Lourdes, is an older, wiser sequel to that album’s lullaby-like Little Star, alluded to in its opening lines.

The artwork for Confessions II. Photograph: Warner Records/Boy Toy/AP

Equally, a more sceptical voice might suggest that Confessions II is for them – namely the fans who’ve bailed on Madonna over the last two decades. By common consent, Confessions on a Dance Floor was her last untrammelled triumph. Every subsequent album she’s released has sold half what its predecessor did: her last, 2019’s Madame X, shifted half a million copies compared to Confessions on a Dance Floor’s 10m. Here, Confessions II’s title seems to implicitly suggest, is the Madonna you used to love; a craven attempt to win back deserters.

There’s doubtless a grain of truth in that – but Confessions II doesn’t feel particularly craven. Its sound eschews cutting-edge developments in dance music in favour of more tried-and-tested stuff. There’s the odd hint of UK garage – a noticeable skip to the rhythms of both Fragile and Good for the Soul – a whisper of EDM in Everything’s heavy bassline, and of Euro pop-dance in Read My Lips’ cocktail of pacy beat, Spanish guitar and sampled batucada drums. But for the most part, its primary influences are defiantly old school: I Feel So Free is derived from Lil Louis’ old Chicago classic French Kiss; Bring Your Love borrows from Inner City’s Good Life; an acid line erupts midway through Love Without Words; there’s lovely, understated piano on One Step Away that recalls Mr Fingers’ deep house. Similarly, the downtempo tracks carry a distinctly 90s Mo’ Wax mood: breakbeats, misty atmospherics, crackling vinyl, muted orchestrations, a Gainsbourg-y bit of spoken word from Belgian rapper Stromae and an interpolation from Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No 1 on Betrayal (more artfully done than the chunk of Tchaikovsky unceremoniously dumped in the middle of 2019’s Dark Ballet).

Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter: Bring Your Love – video

This is music that Madonna – and indeed producer Stuart Price – is well versed in: she seems far more at home than she did incorporating trap on Rebel Heart or duetting with Maluma during Madame X’s game attempts to glom on to the Latin American pop vogue. A sense of confidence is audible in the album’s willingness to let Madonna-free instrumental passages run long in the style of a 12in remix and, more strikingly, in the lyrics. Clearly she feels comfortable enough to be vulnerable: there’s a bit of standard-issue Bitch-I’m-Madonna posturing, but more often the mood is reflective, even brittle and regretful.

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The vignettes of her life in early 80s New York are fantastic. Danceteria paints a vivid picture of the titular club, namechecking not only artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring but doorman Haoui Montaug; it quotes Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side, neatly linking different Manhattan demimondes. The vintage drum machine-driven LES Girl remembers a guitar-playing bohemian ex, who – not entirely unexpectedly – got the heave-ho when it became apparent he didn’t share her ambition. The most affecting song might be Fragile, an acoustic guitar-heavy eulogy to her late brother Christopher, with whom Madonna had a turbulent relationship – “we shared a fragile bond … don’t forget about me, don’t forget to be happy” – but The Test runs it close, filled with maternal remorse: “You didn’t ask for all the flashing lights.”

It’s not all good news. Confessions II is nearly 10 minutes longer than the original, and it doesn’t need to be: you could easily lose a couple of the less distinguished house tracks, Love Sensation and School among them. It lacks an undeniable, solid-gold pop banger along the lines of Hung Up, although Danceteria’s bright-hued disco house – one of two tracks co-written and produced by Andrew Watt and Cirkut – comes close. But if it’s not quite as good as Confessions on a Dance Floor, it’s unequivocally Madonna’s best album since Confessions on a Dance Floor, which you suspect will be more than enough for her fans, and might even beckon back some apostates: an accommodation with her past that bodes well for her future.

This week Alexis listened to

Feeble Little Horse – Shopping
Shoegaze-adjacent, but more sassy than that label suggests, Shopping is poppy, noisy and faintly creepy: “Would you fuck with these shoes? I want to look just like you.”