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Charli XCX review, Charli: Reassures listeners that she’s still a sonic adventurer

New album wears its raw, metallic beats and synths on the outside

Helen Brown
Wednesday 11 September 2019 16:22 BST
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The artwork for Charli XCX’s third studio album finds her clad only in a steely squiggle of computer-generated ribbon. It’s a great visual metaphor for a collection of 15 pop songs that at their most thrilling wear their raw, metallic beats and synths on the outside, like scaffolding.

Born Charlotte Aitchison, Charli has been a “rising star” for a decade without ever quite making headline slots. But, after opening for Taylor Swift’s massive Reputation tour, she decided to embrace her underdog status. Instead of shooting for the stadium-filling fame that saw her making conventional music, she made a conscious choice to follow her pioneering nature and cater to a smaller, more engaged audience.

As a fan of the tangier, more experimental pop she made in the wake of 2014 hits “Boom Clap” and “Break the Rules”, I was disappointed by the catchy conventionality of last year’s Troye Sivan, Britney Spears referencing duet, “1999”. That does appear here and it’s not the only track I tended to skip.

But the introductory clangs of opener, “Next Level Charli“, she (and longtime producer AG Cook) reassures listeners that she’s still a sonic adventurer. A series of tough, percussive notes resound in giddy space with the rusty tang of old girders while Charli’s silvery vocals, lower in the mix, promise to “go hard, go fast”. It gives way the terrific “Gone” (featuring Christine and the Queens): loaded with plunks and pings, the creak and grind of old hinges swinging beneath as the two women sing in French and English of feeling weird and unstable. The lyrics have a unhinged, robot grammar: “Am I a smoke?” “Why do we keep when the water runs?”

There’s more gurgling, rattling percussive unease on the cyborg strip-club themed “Shake It”, featuring raps from Big Freedia, Cupcakke, Brooke Candy and Pabllo Vittar over beats first buried deep in the track’s concrete foundations then suddenly bursting into the foreground. The terrific “Click”, featuring German singer-songwriter Kim Petras and Estonian rapper Tommy Cash, is a brag-jam, heavy on the revving and gear grinding, with the dull-ding of a metronome keeping pace in the background. It ends in a mechanical squirm of sci-fi sound effects.

There’s an alien technology edge to the big, romantic ballads too. “Cross You Out” (feat Sky Ferreira) is driven by the industrial drone of intergalactic hanger doors opening and closing, with the sweet, high vocals drifting weightless above. The tender “White Mercedes” – written for Charli’s on-off boyfriend Huck Kwong – is more down to earth: “You know I’ve got a suit of armour on/ You’ll never see me cry.”

Listening on headphones, I was reminded of the late French designer Janet Laverriere. Born in 1909, she was still a powerful, playful force when I interviewed her for this paper in her eighties. She banged a cast iron radiator with a spoon to celebrate the echoes and curves of essential pipework: “I put all the hard plumbing on the outside. In kitchens, in bathrooms, I am feminist, evidemment!”

I felt that spirit through almost every the clink, clunk, crash and molten flare of this album. It ends with another Sivan collaboration: “2099”. “I’m Pluto, Neptune, pull up, roll up, f**k up, future, future...” they intone. Charli’s always so much cooler when she swaps the people-pleasing nostalgic for the free-wheeling futuristic.

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