I love Charli! She’s doing what the other girls think they’re doing, at a pace they’re simply not equipped to handle. I suppose it helps when you don’t have to worry about singing. And that’s not shade. Her voice is great, it’s malleable, it’s just not a singing voice. Unlike apartheid mistress Grimes, rising to prominence hasn’t taken the ‘weird’ out of her, perhaps because her work ethic allows her to shoot out different ideas into different albums and EPs in order to avoid the burnout of working on the same concept for years at a time.
And I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like everything about this album. “claws” is definitely the standout, and while it isn’t on the album, anyone who genuinely liked the album should definitely cook out the utterly ethereal A.G. Cook cover of the song. It captures a totally different vibe, but one that is perhaps even better than the high-speed Maschinenmensch Doing Poppers vibe of the original song.
Other choice tracks include “anthem”, best described as the background music to any Hot Wheels race track; “pink diamond”, a spiritual but not stylistic follow-up to “Next Level Charli”; “c2.0” for that crackly 40 second beat drop embodied by the Ally McBeal dancing baby, and “party 4 U”, a classic that is probably the closest to her Charli album. The only one that I’m kinda eh about? “7 years” feels like a Lorde throwaway.
8/10: The Poppers Queen is back!
