Charli XCX

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

something else that I was thinking of how to explain before I hit enter, oops. It's like it's really simple but sticks way more than the disposable pop she clearly adores.

I love that mixtape so much but "Cloud Aura" wouldn't be the tune I'd carry over from it.

i never heard the mixtape - how does it compare to the album tim?

"i love it" is just completely rotten imo

I haven't heard the album so I can't compare - but the mixtape is shimmering cloud-R&B which by that description should be awful but actually is excellent - "Cloud Aura" is pretty indicative of the overall sound but there's some more discoid and/or balladic stuff on there and there's no other raps.

There are some songs down the end of Super Ultra that could have slotted in fine, on here but for the most part the album is much stronger, which of course it was always going to be given that it has all those pre-release singles on it.

I'm a big fan of "I Love It" (which has had plenty of praise, btw - perhaps not on ILX but certainly elsewhere), but it's not something that would gel with the rest of this record at all; too daphne & celeste / bananarama. it's pummelling, brash, throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air-sometimes sort of stuff; none of the songs on true romance even remotely approach that kind of aggression.

and yes there is a stray comma in that first sentence, oops

Yeah, "I Love It" would sound totally out of place on this but I think it's strange that there's so much dislike for it on its own.

"i love it" did really well on the ilm poll despite not being overwhelmingly praised here (and met with boos and hisses during the results rollout)

yeah i'd be interested to learn what is quite so rotten about "i love it" - as was mentioned upthread, obviously it's loud and obnoxious - but that's the whole purpose of the track, to convey that feeling of just not giving a fuck

I don't _love_ it as much anymore, but I like it in the same way I like Shampoo. And it's not like Icona Pop didn't sound more or less like this for years, so it's not like they "sold out" or whatever accusation you want to level.

at any rate this album is amazing. and yes, "Set Me Free" is massive but it doesn't seem to be the direction Charli XCX wants to go with her singles. alas.

(incidentally, the "Set Me Free" producer's best known for working with _Meds_-era Placebo, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Nicola Roberts and Sohodolls, which is as good a triangulation [uh, with "tri-" replaced with "quad-" as necessary] of this album as you'll find anywhere.)

"i love it" feels clumsy and contrived and, crucially, totally unfun to me. i like don't-give-a-fuck music but it just repels me.

(katherine - picking up something i half-saw on twitter last night if i may, which is prob relevant here - your dislike of "tumblr" as a signifier. i'd say tumblr - regardless of the pockets of tumblr where this isn't the case - signifies decontextualisation above all to me, whether that's endless images/quotes plucked from the ether or the social justice kids or whatever...)

oh, and GREAT review btw

http://www.mtvhive.com/2013/04/23/charli-xcx-true-romance/

haha, that was actually prompted by reading a bunch of metacritic reviews of this very album. the thing is... tumblr is a huge site, with a huge and varied userbase; it's like how people say designs "look like Geocities," as if a site with millions of uses could be somehow aesthetically consistent in a way that isn't "this is how entry-level HTML from cookbooks in 1999 is probably gonna look."

my beef I think is that a lot of time it gets invoked as a kind of shorthand to sneak in pejoratives. like, if someone is trying to say that "this charli xcx album sounds like a thing teenage girls would love," then they should just say it -- and then think about why this is such an important thing to mention. or "this charli xcx album sounds trendy" -- how? why is that bad? etc.

(also, thanks!)

It was fun. Only some small criticisms: A bit too much new album or singles I don’t care for (crowd went insane for 1999) and not enough of the era I love. Dunno if she needed 30 outfit changes either, kinda would slow the momentum.

she iconic tho.

still playing Crash a lot. Do i like it more than Pop 2?!?!?!!! Maybe. How I'm Feeling Now is the best.. but not gonna replay it this much.

Currently can't get enough of Beg For You, particularly the end

Rina: [vocal acrobatics]
Charli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

perfection

Concert last week was so much fun, and the audience absolutely lapped up the whole show.

omg that Alexandria Palace setlist rules!

ok pretty much the same at Norwich and wherever. aaa so jealous

ok "Forever" or "Anthems" would've gone a long way

About a week after going to the gig I heard “Move Me” again and it reminded me how incredible the performance on the night was – spellbindingly so – and I’ve been a little bit obsessed with the song since.

show at a local festival over the weekend was great!

she's playing here the same day i already have a ticket to see pavement

and i love charli way more than pavement but charli will probably be back in a few years while pavement won't ugh

does your username come from the fact WA might as well be in space sometimes lol

search within yourself, the quandary will resolve

i've never been to WA so i wouldn't know

I've been to paradise but I've never been to WA

This bump reminds me that being a Gen Xer who laments for the days of the 80s extended mix of singles, I am very grateful for people like ben. who have been making edits of the tracks from Crash.

Here’s Constant Repeat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFR-BLxNneI

But they have done extended edits of the whole album if you investigate their channel, and I wish this was more of a standard thing.

And, here’s the plug bit, I played this mix in my best of 2022 show here: https://soundcloud.com/1btn/inter-mission-09122022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awe3m4yVeT4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmvi8wsHzDU

decent enough but nothing to get excited about

It’s alright.

I am already enjoying singing “In the city, in the dog dog dog” to our dog though.

I think when she makes "generic" pop, she can still be good but this is generic (derogatory)

Sam Smith makes everything they touch as boring as fuck.

https://www.instagram.com/charli_xcx/reel/C2u7b_0Rbrp/

teasing a new track + announced a boiler room performance on 22 feb

Wonder what 536 refers to?

536 iirc

or is it 653

She parties 536 days a year.

from the snippets I've heard it sounds like the new track will sample "Perfect (Exceeder)" or at least approximate it

love the new single

I really like it too although the release was somewhat anticlimactic for me as I feel like I'd heard the song already via snippets and videos from her Boiler Room.

it's not bad but it's not amazing either

It kicks into the chorus very satisfyingly. Video is pretty cool and takes it up a notch.

Yeah the way it releases the energy in the chorus is a simple trick but it works. If I was drunk and younger I’d probably lose my mind if you played it by the time the 4th red bull vodka hits.

She debuted "So I", a SOPHIE tribute, at a Billboard event:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdZRDY3AT74

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr-bX9Wlo_I

these are decent

“Club Classics” seems like more of a SOPHIE tribute than “So I”, even.

I couldn't get into Von Dutch, but I love both of these new songs. That So I performance is great too. Looking forward to the album.

really love all the shifts in "b2b"