Charli XCX

No thread on her yet. Her two singles released this year ('stay away', 'nuclear seasons') got the 'best new track' feature on Pitchfork and TheSinglesJukebox rated the later with a 7.83 which is quite a high score by their standards. Also it seems she's been getting the love by british press for a few years now, but I can't confirm that firsthand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBxC5bRbruQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1GNx2bwZa4

Is she named after a Star Trek episode?

From interview magazine http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/brit-pop-girls#_ :

CHARLI XCX
FULL NAME: Charlotte Aitchison. “The XCX really stands for ‘kiss Charli kiss’ which is unbelievably crap.”

AGE: 17.

PROVENANCE: Hertfordshire.

SOUND: Pouty raps, fuzzy basslines.

INTERVIEW: How long have you been making music?
CHARLI XCX: I started writing my own things when I was about 8. I used to try to bully my friends into imitating the Spice Girls on the playground. Then I realized, Oh god, my career’s going nowhere, so I looked in the Yellow Pages and phoned up the first cheap studio that I found and started recording.
INTERVIEW: What’s your song “I Wanna Be Darth Vader” about?
CHARLI XCX: Well, last night on Britain’s Got Talent, there was this absolute twat dancing to
Michael Jackson in a Darth Vader suit, which put me off a bit, but I used to think Darth Vader was really sexy—the mask, the voice, the heavy breathing, and the way that his cape whooshes when he walks.
INTERVIEW: What’s your grand plan?
CHARLI XCX: Well, there are a huge amount of girls out at the minute and they’re all great, but I feel like I could take them all on. I like Lady Gaga’s music and I think her fashion is great, but I saw her on a chat show and I wanted to punch her in the face. I kind of like La Roux, but her voice sometimes really annoys me. That said, I recently noticed that I’ve been doing really high notes in my songs, and I’m like, Oh no, here it comes. I’m going to turn into La Roux. And I’ve just gotten a massively short haircut with a huge fringe. Next I’ll be going ginger.

God bless all these musicians before their PR agents get to them and they actually give fun interviews.
Great songs, by the way.

Whoops, meant to say "God bless all these youngish musicians while they're still giving fun interviews, before their PR agents get to them."

kinda confused by seeing people have their minds blown by her. she's ok i guess, need to hear way more though - i like what i've heard but i'm not fully convinced for some reason, seems a touch heavy-handed

Stay Away is definitely one of my favorites this year. Nuclear Seasons, not really.

Totally into "Nuclear Seasons" and I think I'm gonna go see her tomorrow at her first US show (!)

i love stay away. and valentine. haven't heard anything else other than nuclear seasons which a lot of people seem to like but i don't really get

the chorus in this is great http://soundcloud.com/charlixcx/youre-the-one/s-pU6Fs

Still waiting for something as good as Stay Away. Not even the Icona Pop song is close imo.

okay so this "super ultra" mixtape is just ridiculously great

It is!

cosign! this is probably the closest an album has come to approximating the feel of maxinquaye for me, sounds amazing late at night. rapping over "moments in love" is p much a direct route to my heart. it's a little messy, but the songs are really there. also i didn't realize she was only 20--she'll probably go for leaner production choices in the future.

Everything is consistently excellent. Also "Heatwave" is my jam.

It's almost as if... Someone made tumblr-pop that justified the adjectives and lurid colourscapes.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14932-various-artists-you-ha-ha-ha-lindstrm-remix/

Lindstrøm gives this shit a proper workout.

i really have no idea what to make of this album, like even whether i'm enjoying it or not

i feel like i'm on the brink of being completely YESSSSS THIS IS RESONATING DEEPLY WITH ME but i can't...quite...get...there and it's the kind of thing where if you're NOT on board emotionally it's kind of functionally useless

"you're the one" is a bit of a monster though

albeit i think i might like "you're the one" better if it didn't plunge shamelessly into its cheesy chorus?

the brooke candy verse on this is disappointingly terrible

have't heard the album but from the singles can attest that if you're on board emotionally they are the best ever

there's a vagueness that keeps me from being emotionally on board "you're the one" but that curving bass

really love the lingering the verses do on "you (ha ha ha)" too

Does she have her own "I Love It" on this? I am still curious to hear what she would have done with it instead of Icona Pop.

I'm into this newest single "what I like". she has a knack for cadence

streaming over @ pitchfork advance

This has very big Alisha's Attic vibes writ large all over it. It's a modern pop album that seems designed for people who grew up in the 90s, which is probably either really cute and endearing, or naff and silly, depending on your taste for talky-sung verses in the style of Siobhan Fahey when in Shakespeare's Sister.

Charli XCX herself seems very much a pop starlet for the twenty-something crowd, in the way she nonchalantly swears and sings about sexual encounters but it's all framed in this goth-pop cuteness with easy melodies and simple vivid imagery. I can see this album's relationship to 90's r&b being comparable to the way Anniemal took 80's disco and made it sound very pop but very chic, even though this is a lot more obviously dark and menacing.

aka the awful song with Brooke Candy made me nervous but I even don't mind that in the context of the album and You (Ha Ha Ha) is actually better than I remembered and the rest of it is great. The first three singles are still the best stuff here especially Nuclear Seasons but this is a pretty wonderful pop album.

as extravagant as charli's overload of stylistic reference points is, i don't think it's what's preventing this clicking for me - basically just don't think her songwriting is quite there yet. it's a bit overstuffed but the problem is less that and more her lack of a really distinct songwriting voice

or just, interesting words, or something

i think i'm the only person in the world that doesn't hate the brooke candy song. the second-to-last one "how can i" would be the dud if i had to pick one

You're not alone. Cloud Aura is one of her best. That said, True Romance is a let-down for me largely due to the production. My favorite track is What I Like, but even it has it's problems. Like why start of with a great intro that gets you all hyped up, only to never reference it anywhere else in the song? Still love it, but that's just one example of the many opportunities missed by this album. I expected it to be much more in the vein of Dance 4 U and Velvet Dreaming but the album's first half is like a 90's rehash of what Little Boots was doing with 80's pop.

I've been cool on her other singles but "What I Like" is marvelous.

this is awesome; the two-year-old songs thread in pretty seamlessly

weird but so far i prefer the album tracks to most of the singles (except "what i like" which wow). "like roses" and "take my hand" especially

black roses*

Really, really, really good record.

after seeing her live last week this album is finally seriously beginning to click for me

in a way i'm glad the singles never quite did it in isolation because i get to feel the rush of "YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUE" now instead

CUZ I CAN TASTE YOUR LIPS ON MY LIPS
YOUR KISSES TAKE ME OUT OF CONTROL
AND I CAN FEEL MY BLOOOOOOOOD
IT'S CRAWLING THROUGH MY VEEEEEEIIIIIIIINS

somewhere, shirley manson feels proud

brooke candy's rap on "cloud aura" is so so bad but the rest of it is so good

WHY YOU WANNA GO TO SLEEP
DON'T GO TO SLEEP
DON'T GO TO SLEEP
LET'S GO OUUUUUT

hmmm i gave this album a couple spins last week but i only actually liked about half of it (mostly the front half, but some later too), the rest just became this amorphous blur of whatever

it's taken me about a month and about...8 or 9 plays, i guess, to click

YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUUUUUUE is wonderful. all of this is wonderful.

except for brooke candy

Is "cloud aura" the same as on last year's mixtape?

yeah no changes as far as i can tell

"set me free" is ENORMOUS and shoulda been the lead-off single instead of "you"

I still don't get why "I Love It" didn't get the praise this is getting, I know it's noisy and brash but that's kinda the point?

This keeps getting better on repeated listens, it's not so much that it's a grower as

This is so great, very different from Coachella.

Unreal

Yeah, cool set (musically and design-wise). But I clicked on the other Lollapalooza channel first and was exposed to Billy Corgan, still a little shaken up.

Yeah, he was in a black dress, which is fine, I just wasn't expecting it.

The dress was fine, it was just that he was singing like Billy Corgan.

But this Charli set is dynamite.

I saw her forever ago at Bonnaroo — 2013 I think. I mostly remember "I Love It," but she had star quality for sure.

This set is epic, people will need to seek it out on YouTube

there's working stream here: https://awardstreams.pages.dev/stream2

I'm now convinced that she is the best musical artist out there today, or top 3.

Act I:

No One Lasts Forever intro
Rock Music (extended)
Yeah
Apple
Wink Wink (extended outro)
Card Declined (extended outro)

Act II

Track 10
Girl, so confusing Lorde remix)
pink diamond

Act III

House (Live debut)
Dying for You / Club classics / 365
(Live debut for "Dying for You"; 365 is the Shygirl remix)
360
Sympathy is a knife
Von dutch
Guess (Billie Eilish remix)

Act IV

If You Take Away the Music Then What Has She Got?
2007 / Camera ("Camera" had an extended outro.)
party 4 u / Playboy Bunny / SS26 (Extended Intro to the first two songs in the medley.)
No One Lasts Forever

Currently up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPy6o07BUa4

Almost went yesterday but I had stuff to do, and probably would have had to leave early before her set, anyway. But one of my kids went and had a blast at her set. I'd seen her a couple of times, once early on with that all-girl band (behind the second album), and then once at ... Pitchfork? That was mostly her prancing around, this Lolla set seems like it was more fun/wild.

I thought her set last night (via Livestream) was brilliant - just a really dominant, visceral performance.The way she brought the aesthetic/idea of her new album to her other songs (Brat songs,How I'm Feeling Now songs, etc) felt singular. Reinforced my love for the new album and made me want to relisten to some of the older songs through its perspective

that live set is fucking great.

I thought I might have been dreaming. That performance was so good that it couldn't be real.

Look forward to watching that. Wasn't too excited with the album after 1 play but it'll get a bunch more. Is she still tweaking the mix or something?... cuz it seems to re-download to me phone every time i open Tidal.

Happy birthday!

xpost that sounds like an app error, has not happened on apple music and of course the cd and vinyl are already out.

Yes though odd only with this album. I have loads of stuff downloaded. Anyhow, just played it twice while biking trails and I'm coming around on it. She's great at the whole critique of fame thing but it's my least favourite mode of hers. Wasn't real excited for a whole album of it. Magic Metal Montana best thing so far.

Re: Lollapalooza, between the black eyeshadow and the mannerisms I was getting a little bit of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Nijq7duLI

I'm one of those that doesn't like seeing the 'three old white guys' on the cover of 'Music, Fashion, Film' ... I'd greatly prefer the cover to be the image of Charli at work in the studio, the one that comes with the (vinyl) album --- in fact I've flopped the images, and made the poster into the cover of my personal LP copy. My initial impression of the first couple of preview tracks of 'Music, Fashion, Film' was totally negative. I was left with the sinking feeling that the apparent triumph of the extreme brevity of the so-called Tik Tok song model conclusively proved either A) pop has reached a complete dead end or B) pop is now totally beyond my grizzled generation's ability to comprehend. However, when I heard the LP as a whole, and found that the 11 songs become one overwhelming rush of excitement, and made total sense. The short song lengths combine to cumulative, exactly like Wire's 'Pink Flag' or 'Send Complete' (the Wire comparison inevitably reveals what generation I belong to.) This album is pure, pleasure and addictive as can be' it's one of greatest --- and funniest --- and most harrowing --- albums of our time. As others have observed, the vinyl version (at least the one that I bought) retains the locked groove at the album's end, but without Cronenberg's bit; as an album ending I find it much MUCH stronger without his words (although, since I heard the streaming and download versions first, and it could be that my mind is still hearing his ghosted, looped take on the 'art is long, vita brevis' theme. I thought that I'd read that the PC Music experiment had declared itself finished, but obviously two of its best-known producer/svengalis are still producing albums in the PC mold. There are PC music connections to two of the very greatest 21st century pop albums that I know: Caroline Polachek's 'Desire, I Want To Turn Into You' (my favourite LP of the past two decades) and Charli's 'Music, Fashion, Film'. It's interesting that Polacheck's maximalist style builds upon the great rock 'song' records of the 70s (oddly enough, it's Polacheck that picks up where Charli's Cover Star John Cale left off in the early 80s: yet Polacheck co-produced 'Desire' with Danny J Harle --- the PC dude who on first acquaintance, seemed like the avant-formalist of the movmemnt, next to A.G. Cook's apparent traditionalism, expressed on his solo album as an attempt to make a retooled 21st-century late Beatles album. Yet, it was Cook, not Harle, that aided Charli XCX in taking her avant bricolage to an even higher level of wondrously obnoxious empty bliss on this new album. (Both of Polacheck's full-length solo albums are so overwhelmingly superb that I checked out Harle's own solo release(s) for clues as to his input --- Polacheck is definitely bringing the songcraft, composition, and musical magic to her Harle-involved tracks, while Cook seems to have made it possible for Charli to take her most extreme ideas to their most (so far!) impressive ends. (However, it shouldn't be forgotten that, however forgettable his albums might be, it was Danny J Harle who quietly unleashed 'Broken Flowers', an absolute stunner of a hallucinatory dance track that gets my personal vote for the'Voodoo Ray' of our time.) Anyway, great album, Charli!

"I'm one of those that doesn't like seeing the 'three old white guys' on the cover of 'Music, Fashion, Film'"

I havent actually seen much debate about this online - are there people/fans not into it?

i think its her thumbing her nose at cultural trends. or maybe shes in fact right in line with the reversing cultural tide. not seen any comments from her on choosing those three guys, but shes clearly picked them out for a reason.

I like the cover. I think being in a position to summon Scorsese, Cale and Jacobs for a quick photoshoot is a flex you can’t pass on.

Let’s be real those aren’t just “three old white guys”.

Also them being old icons from another era seems relevant with some of the themes in the album.

It's a flex (and a sweet one at that), and also a nice reversal of what I grew up with, which was old white guys putting sexy young women on their album covers.

Them being reduced to just old white dudes is on point with “noone lasts forever”.

So, I think on its own without context it’s a good album cover. A flex for Charli and a good talking point. But with the nihilistic themes throughout the album it becomes more deep and with a higher purpose than what it seems at first.

good comments. yeah i think its def a flex, like look who i can get. obv not just any old white guys, its not like she got some street photographer to take photos of random dudes, and yeah it fits with the allusions to classic cool in the album. not sure about it being a take on guys putting sexy young women on the cover, she'd have to get some young hot male models for that. did briefly entertain the idea the biggest flex would be getting these old white dudes to do sexy poses in sexy clothing but obv no one would want that lol

Yeah I don't think she was responding to guys putting women on album covers, I just think it's kind of funny in light of that. Moka otm about its resonance with the album themes.

not sure about it being a take on guys putting sexy young women on the cover, she'd have to get some young hot male models for that.

She already did this kind of thing with the "Boys" music vid anyway

I can relate to the cover choice because when I was exploring films and music of the past for the first time, it really was me getting really engaged in very old men who never were discussed by any of my peers, and inevitably someone much older would express their surprise that I'd be looking for a movie or a record by them or know anything about them, whether it was Ernst Lubitsch, Jelly Roll Morton, etc., etc. And it wasn't like I was shunning the present, but once I got to high school, it just sank in that I was only engaging in maybe 10 years worth of culture when there was a whole ocean's worth going back to the beginning of the 20th century that was waiting to be explored. So when I saw the cover, it struck me as coming from the same impulse.

(And yes, emphasis on men because women weren't as prominent, especially when it came to film where there were far fewer female directors for most of film history, a reflection on the lack of opportunity.)

same with music

Lots of interesting ideas about the album cover and --- I agree with them all! The photo worked a treat as an Instagram rollout gimmick, and the thumbnail gets the job done as an attention-getter on crowded streaming platforms ("what is Scorsese doing on John Cale's new awful album? Wait, I was looking for the new Charli XCX, huh?") I decided I wanted the album on vinyl (which BTW sounds fantastic), especially was curious to hear how the side flip between 'I'm Afraid' and 'Yeah' worked (it works great!) However, seeing the photo at 12 X 12 size on arty matte cardboard overwhelmed the record in a way it didn't as an online thumbnail. So when I flipped the enclosed poster of Charli In Charge Workng HARD In The Studio, it was just a whim of mine -- I don't expect others to do the same! Was it ever revealed in this lengthy thread why Cronenberg's voice is omitted from the vinyl version of 'No One Lasts Forever' (and is it also deleted from the CD, assuming one was released?) I was so used to the streaming version that his speech, in all its awkward sadness, was already burned into my memory. It's so spooky when he simply doesn't materialize on the LP. (I recall someone in the thread observed the formal interest in the way Cronenberg 'answers' Cale's opening lines on 'Wuthering Heights', a cross-album bit of closure.) The LP version retains the venerable locked groove trick as illustration of repetition / the Eternal, and the sound makes quite a beautiful album end on its own. There's an unexpectedly shocking ending sense of absence (but would that effect exist if I hadn't heard the Cronenberg version first?) One petty gripe of mine transforms itself into an interesting thought experiement: the price of the Apple Music download is (was?) shockingly, only 4.98 (US dollars) -- yay! After all, it's a very VERY short album, thanks Charli! But the LP is, of course,in the $30-plus range, which didn't exactly surprise me: like all newly-pressed records, it's an ecologically-dubious luxury item. Charli's very good at making ever single detail of her releases and release strategies seem to be communicating something important. And that 'seem' probably should be omitted: she's not just a talented songwriter/performer, but also one of our canniest political conceptual artists.

cronenberg was recorded very last-minute and the version with him just wasn't ready in time to make it onto the vinyl

UFO: thanks for the info --- makes perfect sense, given the lag time to get vinyl pressed. Definitely worth hearing without Cronenberg --- not better or worse, but a valid alternative.

There is a CD, and he's listed in the tracklist. (I actually just got mine today.)

Thanks
Thx, birdistheword! Sounds like the long lead time for vinyl resulted in an interesting, if unintentional variant!

Thanks
Thx, birdistheword! Sounds like the long lead time for vinyl resulted in an interesting, if unintentional variant!

'SS26' is such a devastating capture of the current dread times in a simple but perfectly formed recording.

It's probably been mentioned in the thread somewhere, but there's an interesting series of Youtube videos with the artist and her collaborators about making the album, including an installment specifically about recording Cronenberg (and coming up with the alternative for the vinyl edition.) Pretty cool that they used the early Steve Reich tape phase piece 'It's Gonna Rain' as an inspiration for the treatment of Cronenberg's voice. Also lots in that video and the ones on the other songs about the truly crazy way the songs were put together out of pure, often random, noise. (The episode on 'Card Declined' is especially enlightening and entertaining.)

The link (assuming it hasn't already been shared)L https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OhDEvEODsc

i think the album art is terrible but not because an image of three famous old white dudes is inherently bad (if anything they're not old enough, she should've subbed jacobs for ralph lauren or giorgio armani imho), it's just got no vibe or reason for existing beyond evoking the concept of 'three famous old white dudes'

Those videos are just clips btw, the audio version of the podcast has the full thing.

people with the vinyl got a good deal tbh. im a big cronenberg fan but idk if i need to listen to that little speech more than a few times. though it makes sense when it starts to just loop/trigger the one phrase.

Just saw the most recent Gregg Araki film and she does a good job in a supporting role.

Best Lying in Bed Reading performance of the year imo

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOL-GhLH2eo

this would make such a good bloc party song