Charli xcx thrives in contradiction on Music, Fashion, Film

It's a crossroads that feels less like Brat's Bonnie Raitt Nick of Time lineage and more like something Charli had to choose, consciously, deliberately. Raitt’s story of fragility hovered over Brat, especially in the Bon Iver remix of “I think about it all the time,” where Raitt’s sampled voice is a ghostly mentor whispering about time slipping away before you’ve done the thing. Music, Fashion, Film metabolises the sentiment and becomes a new sort of offer to Charli: No longer does she have to prove herself to the industry as she seemed to have done with her last two albums; perhaps even more difficult here, she’s proving herself to herself.A.G. Cook’s guitar work threads through the album with an off‑the‑cuff immediacy recalling Blur’s 1997 hit “Song 2,” a track indifferent to polish and meaning. Charli thrives in that space – tossed off yet intentional, sincerity and irony collapsing into each other. The Strokes and Blur are obvious references (she practically admitted it with that “no but I love the strokes” caption) as is her sophomore album, Sucker; yet it’s more than a return to Sucker’s Tumblr-girl pop-rock DNA, even though Sucker remains the blueprint for a lot of the 2020s...