This week at a film screening, someone asked Isabelle Huppert how her work relates to other art forms. Music, fashion, literature—does she incorporate her appreciation into her films? She said, “I don’t.” She said, “I could be the same actress without coming out of my bedroom, just by my imagination and thinking.” I think that’s as clear a distinction as you could make between the actor’s job and the pop star’s: representing a version of someone else versus representing a version of themselves.
Charli xcx spells it out in the title of her new album, Music, Fashion, Film, which she’s described as being “about process.” It follows her soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights and, more notably, BRAT, which became the kind of cultural phenomenon that some pop musicians would be tempted to try to outdo immediately. Charli has, wisely, throttled back for a fashionably short new album with a first-draft, “one for me” feeling that resembles the quasi-vérité style of how i’m feeling now. Music, Fashion, Film makes a few pointed rejoinders to BRAT style: Rather than club pop and wounded electronics, Charli and co-producers A.G. Cook and Finn Keane are making “rock music,” with guitars. The mood has shifted, themes of career insecurity and self-doubt replaced with creativity and gratitude for success. One whole song, “Magic Metal Montana,” is dedicated to Cook as a collaborator and friend. It’s sweet.
No score yet, be the first to add.
You’ll need a little familiarity with Charli’s whole deal for this one—by now, you’re supposed to understand that she’s in on the joke. You’ll know this long before you hear her say, “Maybe I fucked your dad/Just kidding I’m only saying that for effect,” on “Wink Wink,” a song that sounds a little like it’s 2005 and I’m listening to some NME also-ran band like the Rakes. The left-footed charm of Music, Fashion, Film is that every readily identifiable flaw or fuckup is dead center and obviously coordinated for effect. When the “rock” consists of pointing in the general direction of either Garbage grunge-pop or a Strokes riff—confirmed, that is rock. If “Yeah” has about 12 words total because the whole song is made of the drop in “Song 2”—like, did you need a bridge and an outro? Clearly not.
This TikTok logic means that if you were to just read the lyrics you’d say this is one of the least written albums of all time. But the record is full of little somatic thrills—doubled vocal harmonies, sharp dynamic contrasts—that come densely packed yet discrete and readily clippable (“Fucking shoot me”). “Yeah” is not only edging you for a whole two minutes but actually warping the timekeeping, slowing down and glitching like bad Bluetooth. “2007” is a jumble of little instrumental and vocal hooks that give the impression someone’s been tossing the stems like toy jacks, trying to grab one more. In “I’m Afraid,” the band turns on the seasick Pixies-style guitars as Charli expels anxieties in a heavy-lidded triplet chant (in press materials she compares this song to Yung Lean). Sometimes she fits in a whole line and then it turns out that “Don’t fucking choke on your ego when you see me coming” can be quite melodic.