Charli XCX’s Brat is Abrasive, Absurd, and Irresistible: Review

The post Charli XCX’s Brat is Abrasive, Absurd, and Irresistible: Review appeared first on Consequence.

Charli XCX’s new album Brat is not for the faint of heart. Don’t be fooled by the commercial-leaning pastiche of Charli’s last record Crash, which was arguably her most accessible album since her 2013 debut, True Romance. No, that Charli has been ran over — perhaps in “Speed Drive,” the haywire hyperpop cut from the Barbie soundtrack.

Instead, on Brat, Charli XCX gets her hands dirty. It hearkens back to both the Vroom Vroom, Number 1 Angel, and Pop 2 eras of Charli while also leaning into the neon-soaked hedonism of late aughts turbo pop. Those mixtapes she made with SOPHIE, A.G. Cook, and Easyfun weren’t just influential to the broader avant-pop movement, they clearly bear significance for Charli herself. She’s brought back the latter two producers for multiple tracks, along with her fiancé George Daniel. Brat aims to be both the Red Bull and the vodka.

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Charli XCX dedicated Crash to the late producer SOPHIE, with whom she made numerous tracks up until her death in 2021. But Brat sounds more indebted to SOPHIE’s work than its predecessor, and that’s not just including the gorgeous, heartfelt dedication of “So I.” There’re a lot of post-pop-style choices, moments of abrasiveness and dissonance, and cutting, hi-fi production, informed by the bombastic late 2000s sound that Charli has often sunk her teeth into.

“Von dutch” is like a bloghouse cut from 12 years ago that got dropped in a vat of radioactive sludge. The remarkable “Mean girls” is all David Guetta-esque turbo pop until the second chorus, where Charli isolates just a jazzy piano and builds the beat back up from there. A song fittingly dedicated to “the bad girls” containing one of the silliest, most dramatic detours on the album is exactly the kind of odd dichotomy Charli wants to capitalize on — tension and release, progression and subversion.

Though sharp edges abound, some tracks dial down their aggressive tendencies for a more well-rounded sound. The giddy, disco-coded “Talk talk” hearkens back to that euphoric Ed Banger-era, like “Von dutch,” but without the corrosive edge. She utilizes her airy head voice on the song’s infectious chorus — not a typical move for Charli, but one that makes “Talk talk” feel as bubbly as champagne. “Apple” evokes a bubblegum flair, but almost surprisingly, this conventional sound feels out of place compared to the more haywire, unpredictable tracks.

When announcing Brat, Charli said in an interview that the album was “direct”: “I’m over the idea of metaphor and flowery lyricism and not saying exactly what I think, the way I would say it to a friend in a text message,” she said. “This record is all the things I would talk about with my friends, said exactly how I would say them.”

The lyrics of Brat go from Instagram caption-core to free association to full emotional disclosure. “I am everywhere I’m so Julia,” she sings in one quick breath on the opening cut “360,” elongating the final vowel sound of “Julia” with a raised note to suggest that “Julia” is not just the physical person Julia Fox but an idea, a persona, an attitude. It’s predicated on the idea that the listener knows she’s talking about Fox, but even decontextualized, you can understand what she means when she says “I’m so Juliaaaa” — her attitude is that commanding.

The heaviness of Brat lies mainly in the trio of more forlorn tracks — the SOPHIE dedication “So I,” and the existential ballads “I might say something stupid” and “I think about it all the time.” In the latter two tunes, Charli shares her sadness, contemplating what life might be like as a mother on “I think about it all the time” and fearing that her job is directly in opposition to that role. Meanwhile, Charli investigates a more complex dynamic with another female pop star in the downright weird “Girl, so confusing,” the tension in their relationship emphasized by pops of pitched-up “Girl!” vocal samples that sound both chipper and deflated.

But the most fascinating moment of Charli XCX’s outward-to-inward-to-outward journey on Brat comes from “Rewind.” At a first listen, it kind of sounds like a rehash of Charli cut “1999” as she begs for a “rewind” to when times were simpler and she was less concerned about her own insecurities. But rather than long for nostalgia for the sake of it, Charli legitimately evaluates her whole career for a moment. “I used to never think about Billboard/ But now I’ve started thinking again, wondering about whether I deserve commercial success,” she sings.

This is a significant point of tension in “Rewind” and Brat as a whole. Charli XCX is very clearly having as much fun as possible, starting the party over and over again with in-your-face ragers and bad-bitch club tracks. But Charli is right to show that as shiny and futuristic the exterior is, she is not indestructible.

Right now, Charli XCX is finally embarking on an arena tour in North America with Troye Sivan, and it’s a major step away from the cozy underground scene she’s championed for her whole career thus far. She knows she’s risking alienating casual pop fans who might be disinterested in the bombastic sheen of her new music, and yet, there’s a part of her wondering if that compromise is even worth it. How can she be both “Main pop girl” and “Queen of the raving underground”? If she has been relegated to pop’s middle class, whether that be via the industry or consumers themselves, is that on par with the quality of music she knows she’s capable of making?

Luckily, there’s one thing Charli XCX is wonderfully consistent about: She waits for the world to catch up to her, and not the other way around. “Cult classic but I still pop,” she barks this time on “Von dutch” — a supreme summation of her unique position in the pop landscape, and another intriguing promise for the future.

Editor’s Note: Get tickets to see Charli XCX live here.

Charli XCX’s Brat is Abrasive, Absurd, and Irresistible: Review
Paolo Ragusa