Charli XCX

one play in i'm pretty impressed. the production is very pleasing to the ear and it's all very hooky. just as i thought things were starting to drag toward the end she started doing some truly bizarre things with her voice. tentative impression: i think i will probably like this better than true romance in the end.

Oh damn, this is something isn't it?

Charli's talked a lot about worshipping Britney Spears and about Blackout being her favourite album of all time, and I think "Doing It" is the first time that idolisation has come across really strongly.

Album sounded fantastic on first play.

this is so great

FUCK YOU

SUCKER

this is the album i hoped 1989 would be (and isn't, except for "style," imo). not in literal style/sound so much as being a just knockdown-amazing-no duds pop album.

I'm in the middle of this and so far I'm loving the "new" tracks. Still nothing yet beats "Superlove" and I'm still annoyed it's not on the album.

i love "superlove" but i can undestand why it was left off.

xp i had that thought re: 1989 too! like there's only maybe one song i might possibly want to trim from this

whereas i had to excise like 25% of 1989 to make it palatable

Agree that there is nothing as good as Superlove on here but this album really is fantastic. London Queen and Break the Rules are probably my least my favourite songs. Doing It is the big highlight, incredible song.

I love London Queen.

i only had to hear this in full once and it instantly made my top 10 of the year. listened a zillion times since then

i feel like the most impressive thing about sucker on first listen is how it moves at such a brisk pace but the songs themselves are so self-contained that you don't really feel like you're constantly trying to play catch-up, it satisfies in that way from start to finish

"doing it" is magnificent, a really excellent simulation of early madonna imo

I read that as "a really excellent situation of early madonna" and thought "otm".

well, yeah

Doing It is wonderful, London Queen is dreck.

london queen is prob the worst song on the album but its still not "bad," imo.

idk what's wrong with all of you

it literally had me dancing into my office when I arrived this morning

"situation" and "vogue" was a favorite go-to blend of mine back in the day

"london queen" rules

yes i love "london queen"

this album is making me giddy w/ joy. love it.

what do people think of the weezer song?

the what

'Hanging Around'. Rivers Cuomo wrote it with Charli after she said she wanted something like 'Beverley Hills' iirc.

its pretty good, although i dont think any of its goodness comes directly from the cuomoesque attributes, feel like he bent to her will and aesthetic pretty well

'Hanging Around' is my least favorite.

"london queen" is fucking awful, it's like a mary and kate and ashley go to the UK soundtrack cut (except those were actually good and this is not)

(that said this album is pretty good)

"London Queen" is almost note for note "Revolution" by the Veronicas. Very hard for me to dislike it on those grounds, even though it's really stupid. I called the album Sky Ferreira meets Skye Sweetnam and my wife asked me why on earth anyone would want to combine those two things. But it's good!

And agree that it's refreshing not to have to scrape off a quarter of the tracks to want to listen to it all the way through.

Thank you, Brad. And dyl. :)

A few OK tracks aside, this is a brilliant album.

never mind I'm a dumbass "london queen" is great

it helped to hear it as a cross-pond version of kay hanley's "nicky passes marble arch"

bridge on "hanging around" >>>>>>> (everything else on "hanging around")

thoughts on her SNL appearance?

if i was on my phone rn it'd be all 100 and prayer hands emojis

she has grown leaps and bounds as a stage presence and embraces the opportunity to be a little ridiculous (dance moves during the post-refrain breakdowns of "break the rules") and can work with nonexistent or minimal backing vocals, a thing not a lot of pop stars (even ones whose stuff i enjoy on record) will do live

dunno about that -- I thought her stage presence was remarkably fully-formed when I saw her live (pre-True Romance)

I posted on Twitter that I thought she was made entirely out of x-factor. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen; it was a very simple performance but transfixing.

If ppl still get SNL popularity bumps, I predict her rising US profile is going to go nova.

I wonder if it would've happened if she'd released "I Love It" herself instead of pulling Icona Pop's strings.

i saw a video of a whole set from some festival and was a little underwhelmed, but, to be fair, that's video & it doesn't always give the proper impression. either way i'm really excited to see her -

*looks up dates, realizes she already came to boston two months ago, kicks underside of desk, stubs toe*

I was pretty underwhelmed by her live a couple of months back. Or rather, just whelmed enough, I guess. It felt way too constricted, from banter to setlist to music (a mix of live but plenty of shadowed pre-recorded stuff) for my tastes. I think Charli XCX's biggest strengths are also her weaknesses. She's not much of a singer (imo) and her direction is kind of erratic, which makes her kind of interesting and exciting, but dunno how sustainable. I think Gaga's overconfidence and ability c. "The Fame" (she was the same age then as Charli is now, amazingly) ultimately hurt her. Charli seems more into the idea of shaking things up, to coin a phrase.

"just whelmed enough" sums up my reaction to everything charli does in general, albeit in different ways every time, though i thought she was actually less constricted the one time i saw her live, more natural, whereas on record there's just enough there to sustain my interest and basic positivity but there's this air of second-guessing and deliberateness that hangs over both albums for me

she's more of a singer when she wants to be, cf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO72qcXvakE

Isn't this just Avril 2.0?

nope, next

slappy in the cut