i really have no idea what to make of this album, like even whether i'm enjoying it or not
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 20:53 (eleven years ago) link
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
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 20:54 (eleven years ago) link
"you're the one" is a bit of a monster though
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 20:55 (eleven years ago) link
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
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 20:57 (eleven years ago) link
have't heard the album but from the singles can attest that if you're on board emotionally they are the best ever
― katherine, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 21:41 (eleven years ago) link
there's a vagueness that keeps me from being emotionally on board "you're the one" but that curving bass
― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 21:46 (eleven years ago) link
really love the lingering the verses do on "you (ha ha ha)" too
― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 21:49 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― boxedjoy, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 22:48 (eleven years ago) link
I'm into this newest single "what I like". she has a knack for cadence
― monotony, Sunday, 31 March 2013 01:54 (eleven years ago) link
streaming over @ pitchfork advance
― monotony, Tuesday, 9 April 2013 15:07 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― boxedjoy, Wednesday, 10 April 2013 22:50 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― boxedjoy, Wednesday, 10 April 2013 22:58 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― twinkin' and drinkin' and ready to fly (Alex in Montreal), Thursday, 11 April 2013 03:20 (eleven years ago) link
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
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Thursday, 11 April 2013 10:38 (eleven years ago) link
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
― monotony, Thursday, 11 April 2013 13:03 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Cousin Slappy, Thursday, 11 April 2013 17:45 (eleven years ago) link
I've been cool on her other singles but "What I Like" is marvelous.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 11 April 2013 17:47 (eleven years ago) link
this is awesome; the two-year-old songs thread in pretty seamlessly
― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 18:53 (eleven years ago) link
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
― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 19:19 (eleven years ago) link
black roses*
Really, really, really good record.
― monotony, Wednesday, 17 April 2013 01:59 (eleven years ago) link
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
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Monday, 22 April 2013 19:51 (eleven years ago) link
CUZ I CAN TASTE YOUR LIPS ON MY LIPSYOUR KISSES TAKE ME OUT OF CONTROLAND I CAN FEEL MY BLOOOOOOOODIT'S CRAWLING THROUGH MY VEEEEEEIIIIIIIINS
somewhere, shirley manson feels proud
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Monday, 22 April 2013 19:59 (eleven years ago) link
brooke candy's rap on "cloud aura" is so so bad but the rest of it is so good
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Monday, 22 April 2013 20:01 (eleven years ago) link
WHY YOU WANNA GO TO SLEEPDON'T GO TO SLEEPDON'T GO TO SLEEPLET'S GO OUUUUUT
― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Monday, 22 April 2013 20:02 (eleven years ago) link
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
― dyl, Monday, 22 April 2013 20:03 (eleven years ago) link
it's taken me about a month and about...8 or 9 plays, i guess, to click
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Monday, 22 April 2013 20:04 (eleven years ago) link
YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUUUUUUE is wonderful. all of this is wonderful.
except for brooke candy
― twinkin' and drinkin' and ready to fly (Alex in Montreal), Monday, 22 April 2013 21:02 (eleven years ago) link
Is "cloud aura" the same as on last year's mixtape?
― Tim F, Monday, 22 April 2013 22:33 (eleven years ago) link
yeah no changes as far as i can tell
― monotony, Monday, 22 April 2013 22:42 (eleven years ago) link
"set me free" is ENORMOUS and shoulda been the lead-off single instead of "you"
― monotony, Monday, 22 April 2013 22:43 (eleven years ago) link
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
― boxedjoy, Monday, 22 April 2013 22:50 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― boxedjoy, Monday, 22 April 2013 22:51 (eleven years ago) link
I love that mixtape so much but "Cloud Aura" wouldn't be the tune I'd carry over from it.
― Tim F, Monday, 22 April 2013 22:51 (eleven years ago) link
i never heard the mixtape - how does it compare to the album tim?
"i love it" is just completely rotten imo
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Tuesday, 23 April 2013 07:52 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 07:58 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― monotony, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 12:11 (eleven years ago) link
and yes there is a stray comma in that first sentence, oops
― monotony, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 12:12 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― boxedjoy, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 18:27 (eleven years ago) link
"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)
― dyl, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 22:58 (eleven years ago) link
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
― monotony, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 23:06 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― katherine, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 23:07 (eleven years ago) link
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.
― katherine, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 23:20 (eleven years ago) link
(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.)
― katherine, Tuesday, 23 April 2013 23:58 (eleven years ago) link
"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...)
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, 24 April 2013 07:48 (eleven years ago) link
oh, and GREAT review btw
http://www.mtvhive.com/2013/04/23/charli-xcx-true-romance/
― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Wednesday, 24 April 2013 07:50 (eleven years ago) link
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!)
― katherine, Wednesday, 24 April 2013 21:25 (eleven years ago) link
Ugh not feeling this at all, there's an underlying clumsiness to almost everything here and she's just not an enjoyable or engaging on-record presence. Awful voice too.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 25 April 2013 11:02 (eleven years ago) link
Agreed, and I even like some of her mixtape material. I just can't with this unfinished-sounding album.
― Cousin Slappy, Thursday, 25 April 2013 15:31 (eleven years ago) link
ok pretty much the same at Norwich and wherever. aaa so jealous
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 27 May 2022 15:14 (one year ago) link
ok "Forever" or "Anthems" would've gone a long way
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 27 May 2022 15:18 (one year ago) link
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.
― Chewshabadoo, Monday, 6 June 2022 18:29 (one year ago) link
show at a local festival over the weekend was great!
― mh, Monday, 11 July 2022 20:51 (one year ago) link
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
― ufo, Thursday, 15 December 2022 03:08 (one year ago) link
does your username come from the fact WA might as well be in space sometimes lol
search within yourself, the quandary will resolve
― imago, Thursday, 15 December 2022 09:04 (one year ago) link
i've never been to WA so i wouldn't know
― ufo, Thursday, 15 December 2022 13:32 (one year ago) link
I've been to paradise but I've never been to WA
― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Thursday, 15 December 2022 13:49 (one year ago) link
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
― Chewshabadoo, Friday, 16 December 2022 00:15 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awe3m4yVeT4
― ufo, Saturday, 21 January 2023 04:05 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmvi8wsHzDU
decent enough but nothing to get excited about
― ufo, Thursday, 19 October 2023 23:12 (six months ago) link
It’s alright.
― Chewshabadoo, Friday, 20 October 2023 10:47 (six months ago) link
I am already enjoying singing “In the city, in the dog dog dog” to our dog though.
― Chewshabadoo, Friday, 20 October 2023 10:48 (six months ago) link
I think when she makes "generic" pop, she can still be good but this is generic (derogatory)
― Murgatroid, Friday, 20 October 2023 13:07 (six months ago) link
Sam Smith makes everything they touch as boring as fuck.
― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 20 October 2023 19:50 (six months ago) link
https://www.instagram.com/charli_xcx/reel/C2u7b_0Rbrp/
teasing a new track + announced a boiler room performance on 22 feb
― ufo, Wednesday, 31 January 2024 08:54 (two months ago) link
Wonder what 536 refers to?
― peace, man, Wednesday, 31 January 2024 17:33 (two months ago) link
536 iirc
― Chewshabadoo, Wednesday, 31 January 2024 18:45 (two months ago) link
or is it 653
― Chewshabadoo, Wednesday, 31 January 2024 18:46 (two months ago) link
She parties 536 days a year.
― Hans Holbein (Chinchilla Volapük), Thursday, 1 February 2024 00:42 (two months ago) link
from the snippets I've heard it sounds like the new track will sample "Perfect (Exceeder)" or at least approximate it
― monotony, Thursday, 1 February 2024 00:53 (two months ago) link
love the new single
― Murgatroid, Thursday, 29 February 2024 17:15 (one month ago) link
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.
― monotony, Thursday, 29 February 2024 23:34 (one month ago) link
it's not bad but it's not amazing either
― ufo, Thursday, 29 February 2024 23:38 (one month ago) link
It kicks into the chorus very satisfyingly. Video is pretty cool and takes it up a notch.
― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 1 March 2024 01:56 (one month ago) link
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.
― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, 6 March 2024 04:30 (one month ago) link
She debuted "So I", a SOPHIE tribute, at a Billboard event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdZRDY3AT74
― monotony, Friday, 8 March 2024 05:44 (one month ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqUfXljALQE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr-bX9Wlo_I
these are decent
― ufo, Wednesday, 3 April 2024 22:02 (three weeks ago) link
“Club Classics” seems like more of a SOPHIE tribute than “So I”, even.
― assert (matttkkkk), Wednesday, 3 April 2024 23:09 (three weeks ago) link
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.
― kitchen person, Thursday, 4 April 2024 01:25 (three weeks ago) link
really love all the shifts in "b2b"
― ufo, Thursday, 4 April 2024 14:45 (three weeks ago) link
Absolutely wild for b2b
― plax (ico), Monday, 22 April 2024 19:25 (four days ago) link
Yeah, it’s really great. There’s a guy on YouTube called “Ben.” who has done some great 12” extended mixes of Charli tracks before and I’m hoping they do the same for this one.
― Chewshabadoo, Tuesday, 23 April 2024 01:09 (three days ago) link