Waiting to board a flight to a buddy’s Annapolis wedding, I played these two bangers end to end. What a relief that a ringer like Charli XCX, due to timing and/or fortuitous collaborators and/or a fecund songwriting period, can pressure-wash this grungy jaded heart.
Charli XCX – Brat
For a while she sucked: a series of arena-sized gestures to court a stardom insistent on eluding her. Her Pitchfork appearance in 2019 made me churlish enough to wonder, “Who are these people cheering for?” Well, they cheered for a Brat that hadn’t appeared yet: a fifteen-track aerodynamic wonder whose arrangements scrunch and pop and glide like no pop album since Femme Fatale except Charli wrote the words and melodies. She doesn’t give a fuck anymore — what a relief. Its theme: how to face the life you’ve ignored after four night out of seven partying (if we believe “365” and why not), maybe more because she’s a quasi-star. On “Rewind” she looks back to a time when she didn’t overanalyze while the thick synths call up Sleigh Bells guitar sludge The exquisitely correct title “Sympathy is a Knife” defines a song abjuring generalized self-pity as applied to a quasi-star, and the clattering electronics — like full-speed Kesha — function as their own blades. A delight too twitchy for radio. Maybe her quasi-stardom was well-placed after all.
Peggy Gou – I Hear You
A devotee since 2019’s “Starry Night,” I shared my disappointment with a friend about her debut’s brevity, but its modesty proved as insinuating as her repetitive melodies and Poppy Bush-era synth horn blats and bass thumps. Last year’s surprise dance hit “(It Goes Like) Nanana” is the template: take a word, squeeze every drop of hooky possibilities, embellish with a two-finger keyboard exercise. Several plays of “I Believe in Love Again” still didn’t give up the identity of the occasionally compelling epicene singer, and I still can’t believe it’s Lenny Fucking Kravitz transmogrified into a disco queen over Chic-indebted rhythm licks and effortfully indulging in a falsetto as delectable as the one on “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” long ago and far away. A retro house album laden with tropes of white parties past but too impatient to dwell on memories.
Humanizing The Vacuum 