God, that cover art is bad. I really hate that shade of green. They use it at my job all the time. Anyway. Y’all know who this is but I’ll write some preamble anyway. BRAT has been billed as a hard reset for the perpetual pop star of the future. That is self evidently true. However, I would argue it is also the opening salvo of the imperial era of…well we can’t call it hyperpop anymore, apparently. You know what I mean. Camilla Cabello is trying to turn into Charli. Her approach to songwriting is all over the radio as well and has been for half a decade. She is directly woven into the unbroken line of ultra-pop musicians, part of a pantheon with Minogue, Gaga, and Kesha. I would argue that this self-evident reality throws her (or her label’s) decision to have her previous album be the sell-outiest thing imaginable into question. 2022’s CRASH was not terrible by any stretch, but it was also not very interesting and now mostly serves as an artifact of a time she was on good terms with Rina Sawayama. One could speculate that, had she quintupled down on her niche instead, she might have finally penetrated the mainstream directly rather than by proxy. Regardless of any hypotheticals, against this context and considering the singles rollout this spring brought us, it’s clear that this album aims to make Charli XCX unignorable.
If any of her projects could do that, it’s this one. Perfectly timed at a new apex of dance music’s penetration into the zeitgeist, BRAT is loud, confrontational, and charismatic. It opens with a prime “I’m back bitch” single, 360, with a propulsive A. G. Cook instrumental. The tone is set, the listener is primed for the absolute most. Club Classics leans even further into the renewed dance vibes that this album soaks in. There’s the tiniest bit of Shygirl peeking through Charli’s vocals, amid another kaleidoscopic firehose of wobbly synth from Cook. George Daniel is also involved, somehow. I remain unclear on what his actual role is. Sympathy Is A Knife is the album’s best ballad, even if I’m stretching the definition a bit. The instrumental is still quite active, but the songwriting is much more vulnerable than the dual sledgehammers that BRAT opens with. The push and pull between these two sides of Charli XCX’s artistry makes up the body of the album.
While BRAT certainly earns the rapturous declarations I have seen up and down the internet that the queen has returned, it is not a perfect album. The first Gesaffelstein credit comes on I might say something stupid. An autotune-soaked downer, it’s certainly pretty but far too short and simple to warrant further examination. Its placement on the tracklist gives me tonal whiplash as well, but I’ve never done cocaine so what do I know. Talk Talk is also not particularly good. Hudson Mohawke is not a good fit for this album or Charli’s aesthetic more generally, but there was a funny reddit post involving him last year so I guess he’s gotta be here. Anton Ego shit aside, I could see this being pushed as a single this summer, I just find it bland. Von Dutch still hasn’t grown on me. It’s too repetitive and melodically uninteresting to justify its position as the centerpiece of the albums rollout. In context it does serve to ramp the energy back up after a (relatively) slow section.
This rebuilt momentum is not put to waste, either. After a pretty weak stretch, A. G. Cook grabs the wheel once again with a career highlight of an instrumental. Lush, textured, and multifaceted, it also showcases some of Charli’s most intricately prosaic writing to date. Everything is romantic is a beautiful song, a perfect marriage of minimalism and maximalism, an earthquake of composition and form. From here, the tracklist is a tad scattershot. Rewind is just an inferior version of 360 featuring production from the guy who made the beat to Fancy by Iggy Azalea. So I is a beautiful tribute to SOPHIE from the two musicians most qualified to speak on her. Fuck St. Vincent once again; this ought to be the definitive statement on her passing going forward. Girl, so confusing sucks. It sounds like a castoff from CRASH. The lines alluding to Lorde are really funny, though. Apple is some decent synthpop. Not terribly remarkable, but functional. B2b features Gesaffelstein’s best contribution to the project, a demented Acid-tinged stomper underscoring an emotionally fraught vocal performance. I like it. I also like Mean girls even though it’s dedicated to my third least favorite kind of person. The Hudmo/A. G. beat goes a long way, I even like that dorky little piano breakdown at the halfway mark. I think about it all the time is a return to diaristic songwriting. The instrumental is unremarkable but it’s an evocative snapshot of the artist’s life. It comes at a weird place in the tracklist, in that it is immediately shoved offstage by the closer. 365 is a turbocharged reprise of 360 where Cook & Co. absolutely cut loose, like a (slightly inferior) redux of Visions. This plays in the nightclub scene in the gay version of John Wick. Somebody should make that. Cast Daniel Craig in it. And Ben Barnes.
Light 8/10. Flawed in places, but a return to form nonetheless. You’ve probably already heard it but if you haven’t, it’s a good time. Listen to Britpop after, it’s even better. It’s nice to have Charli back.
intentionalnachos 