Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for us to look at one of this weekend’s new album releases which is so highly anticipated that it cannot be ignored with yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! It has been an interesting career trajectory for the Cambridge-born singer and songwriter Charlotte Emma Aitchinson to say the least, who began posting her videos to MySpace in 2008 (Ask your parents!), where she was scouted by a promoter who invited Charli to perform at urban warehouse gigs. She later signed to Asylum Records in 2010, where she had some pretty traditional and fairly mainstream Pop hits like ‘Boom Clap’, ‘SuperLove’ and ‘Break The Rules’ while also writing well-known singles for Pop heavyweights like Selena Gomez, Iggy Azalea, Icona Pop, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello. She later became a pioneer of the emerging ‘Hyper Pop’ and ‘Bedroom Pop’ genres while gaining a lot of new fans in the alternative music community with universally praised releases like her 2020 lockdown EP ‘How I’m Feeling Now’ which she produced collaboratively with her fans in a span of six weeks while in self-isolation, a record that played with unconventional Pop structures and experimental electronic production in previously uncharted ways, and it was shortlisted for the 2020 Mercury Prize alongside appearing on year-end lists by Paste, Uproxx, NPR, The Guardian and Consequence Of Sound. Today, she fully leaves the major label Pop music world with her fifth studio album ‘Crash’, which tackles a deal-with-the-devil idea visually. Lyrically, she says that it explores the power of the femme fatale with inspiration from dark spirits and curses which follows the spirit of David Cronenberg’s 1996 film of the same title. Musically, we’re getting a bold fusion of 80’s/90’s power-pop and 00’s synth-pop with a hint of futuristic Bedroom Pop stylings that Charli says was inspired by Janet Jackson. On the BBC Radio 2 playlisted pre-release single ‘New Shapes’, she enlists the help of French Art Pop trailblazer Christine And The Queens and continually rising American star Caroline Polachek. Let’s take it for a drive below.
Charli XCX will be taking her alternative assortment of retro-futurist Pop sounds on the road for a tour of Europe and North America throughout the summer months, and her new LP record features contributions by Rina Sawayama, Digital Farm Animals, Oneohtrix Point Never and several more creatives. ‘New Shapes’ follows a simple story of a stale relationship where both sides are being manipulative, with lyrics like “I don’t know why I got a tendency to run away/Don’t know why I’m always pushing for a sweet escape” that set the scene with bright Synths and 808 beats that will remind you of freestyle girl groups like The Cover Girls or Company B, before a more complex narrative unveils where the narrator is fighting the urge to desert the relationship while feeling exhausted by it, with a cycle of mistreatment manipulating the narrator to feel like a different person while still succumbing to the sexual desire which they share for one another. There are two sides to every coin on ‘New Shapes’ seemingly, where the upbeat keys and the energetic Synth arrangements make it quite easy to overlook the frustrations of the narrator and the complications of their relationship. A strong and consistently high tempo makes the rhythm feel punchy, but the lyrics replicate something a little more mournful in balance. Polachek and Christine are there to play the role of emulating some emotional support from a girl of group friends, who are attempting to cheer Charli XCX up with a scene that may replicate how a group of girls always seem to go to the bathroom together (I went clubbing in my university days, and so that’s a trait I’ve noticed). Their verses are met by a similar soundscape of mechanical drums and reverb-drenched Synths while adding some additional voices to the track for more variety. It doesn’t feel quite as experimental as some of Charli’s other efforts and feels like more of a traditional ‘radio record’ to promote the album, but the blueprints of her wildly successful pandemic EP are still here. I always thought there was something a little different in Charli XCX’s ‘SUCKER’ days of more mainstream Pop where she dealt with overtly sexual content in very expansive ways with a punk attitude, and tracks like ‘New Shapes’ continue to add more nuance to that format. Overall, I think that ‘New Shapes’ is one of the best singles to introduce the more bolder and updated version of Charli XCX to newcomers or previous fans due to it’s accessibility and danceability. It may not feel quite as bold as the tracks on her lockdown EP, but it begs the listener to dance along with it while conveying a sense of urgency and immediacy that clicks together nicely, and that’s coming from somebody who is a little snobbish about this style of Pop music at the best of times. Charli is an extraordinarily talented young lady, and so it’s good that she finally has a platform to show what she’s truly capable of making as a performer and a producer. ‘New Shapes’ may not be her most memorable offering, but there’s something for everyone in here and it conforms to a more accessible Pop sound while not ignoring the experimental EP, and so ‘Crash’ looks more like smooth sailing to me.
That brings us to the bottom of the page for another day! Thank you for taking a moment out of today to visit the site, and I’ll be back tomorrow to review another fresh new Pop-oriented single – this time coming from an Australian DJ/Producer who is recognized as a ‘Future Bass’ pioneer of the 2010’s with several Grammy Award nominations and ARIA Awards attention to his name. He reportedly chose his name after his favourite Bon Iver track – although his name is shared by a type of ravine.
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