Words: Kit Gullis
When I originally sat down to write this review, I was of one mind, I was unwavering in my opinion that Charli XCX’s new album Charli was not the great ‘left-field’ pop album I was expecting from her. However, I have listened to this album in every way imaginable, I’ve wrestled with each of the songs and whilst my thoughts on many of the songs still stand, I’ve grown to appreciate some of the hidden gems that lie amongst the album’s tracklist.
The album starts off strong, Next Level Charli feels like an elevated continuation of her previous work such as Vroom Vroom with its breathless, run-on sentence lyrics that contain the familiar blasé persona many fans of the 27-year-old singer have come to know and love. However, the rest of the album seems to engage in a series of peaks and valleys, with some songs standing as strong contenders for her best work and others falling short of even worth mentioning.
The album definitely has a more mature sound to it. The bubblegum pop tones that are often associated with Charli and her longtime collaborator and producer A. G. Cook have mellowed on this album and has instead evolved into a deeper, richer electronic sound. There is nothing inherently wrong about this, if anything it is a welcomed change, it is just that in this transitionary period the album seems to fall short of any of Charli’s usual jovial and chaotic character. Songs like Warm featuring HAIM, Thoughts and White Mercedes feel like all energy have been sapped out of them and the T-pain level of autotune that famously characterises much of Charli’s work feels like an imposter. Unfortunately, this is a feeling that permeates a lot of the album, it has a quality that makes me say, “I know you, I’ve heard you before, but something is a bit off”.
This is where I face my problem in reviewing this album, all of the best qualities of Charli XCX are present; heavy pop beats, industrial breakdowns, incredibly funny and vapid lyrics, so why can’t I place the album? Why does it still feel alien and flat to me? It is almost as if Charli, who is well known for being a methodical singer-songwriter, has whipped the songs up in a day, hitting all her usual pointers but forgotten to add any of the passion. Charli seems to have perfected the formula but relied on it a little too much. There’s a predictability to the songs, something that feels oxymoronic when discussing Charli’s music. This predictability, the Charli formula, has created a sound that makes many of the tracks on the album indistinguishable from other pop songs. Where Charli has always had an edge on the pop world, she has dulled on this album. She was always one step ahead of the big pop machine, looking back and sticking out her tongue with a mischievous glow, mocking it yet leading the way all at the same time. Nothing made this more clear than her 2017 mixtape Pop 2, it was fun, exciting and not at all serious. It used and subverted all the tropes and requirements to make a best-selling pop single whilst putting its middle finger up to it all in the same breath. It was substance with a grotesquely hedonistic amount of style thrown on top for good measure. However, it seems she has paused on this album and the pop machine has caught up with her.
However, the album is not without its blessings. Both Gone featuring Christine and the Queens and Blame It On Your Love featuring Lizzo reminds the listener of Charli XCX’s ability to harness and nurture the talents of other giant pop sensations and whilst the two songs exemplify Charli’s ability to work with a range of genres and tones they both remain, pop princess, club anthems. Gone, specifically, was a surprise to me both when it was first released as a single and then again with the entire album. The predictability I discussed before is weirdly not present on this song, my expectations were not only subverted they were matched with a very different pleasure. Just when I thought a final round of the painfully catchy chorus was about to begin Charli brings in a breakdown with a distorted version of the chorus, where Christine and The Queen’s voice is warped and distorted and is fragmented over equally disruptive beats. However, the whole thing doesn’t feel discordant, it feels right, a perfect judgement from Charli and it fits so well into the song both sonically and thematically that it pushes the song into final gear.
Equally, the tinny vocal effects and discordant musical arrangement on Shake It are reminiscent of the innovative and bold sounds on Charli’s previous work, placing it as one of the best, if not the best, song on the album. On it she elicits the help of past colleagues Brooke Candy, Cupcakke, Pablo Vitar, who all worked on the song I Got It together, and introduces Big Freedia into the mix, who works so well with the group it should be illegal that it hasn’t been done before. Shake It feels like I Got It part two, it features Charli repeating the same line throughout the song “I shake it I shake it I shake it” as she sets the background to let her featuring guests show off on four incredible lyrical verses. Big Freedia, Cupcakke, Brooke Candy and Pablo Vitar all work wonderfully together, their voices and styles all blend so well on top of this seamlessly produced song. The electronic production guides us on a trip that takes us from Cupcakkes whisper rap to Brooke Candy’s high pitched scream all whilst merging experimental sounds amongst each other and parts of the song can only be described as sounding like a pool of chromatic liquid metal. The song proves how Charli continues to lend herself to uplifting underground queer artists, stepping back into the framework and giving them the microphone to speak for themselves. It’s incredibly powerful to see the effect that it has and has even made Charli XCX the patron saint of memes on queer twitter.
The question I have to constantly ask myself when listening to this album is, “Do I enjoy it?” The question I have to ask myself when reviewing this album is, “Is it a good album?” Sometimes it’s hard to separate the two, especially when you are as avid a fan of Charli XCX as I am. What I have realised is, that upon reflection Charli is not as bad an album as I had originally thought. It was the case of expectation versus reality and it just took me to abandon the hopes I had for this album based off of Charli’s previous singles such as No Angel and Focus to see and respect it for what it really is. I still stand by the impression that Charli XCX occasionally fell back on a good and true plan that took the spontaneity or light out of some of the songs, but I also cannot deny that the songs that are good are great. As the opening and closing songs suggest, this album is a stepping stone into a future sound for Charli and while the album feels a bit clunky and stiff in its transition into maturity, there are still some phenomenal pop songs on this album that only remind me of how much I love Charli and her work. All I really have to say is, long live the poet laureate of pop and here’s to the future.
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