Charli XCX Swaps Dance for Rocking Guitars!

CHARLI XCX: Music, Fashion, Film (Atlantic) 

Rating: Candid, catchy, confident (four stars out of five)

As a party-girl record built around dance beats and vibrant lime-green artwork, Charli XCX's 2024 album, Brat, turned the Essex-raised singer from someone who was, in her own words, 'famous, but not quite' into a bona fide superstar.

It sparked the 'Brat summer' and turned Charli into a bill-topper on 's Other Stage. And its bold cover art became a viral sensation.

After declaring the Brat summer over, the 33-year-old born Charlotte Aitchison initially pivoted to film, creating the soundtrack to Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights and starring in documentary movie The Moment, a satirical portrait of stardom.

But she's now returning to pop, and she cleverly revamps her sound on her seventh studio album, out today.

Music, Fashion, Film largely eschews dance in favour of grinding guitars and distorted electronics. At times, it taps into a strand of off-kilter indie-rock popularised by US bands such as the Pixies in the late 1980s.

Made with regular collaborators A.G. Cook and Finn Keane, it's short and sharp. Its 11 songs race by in 30 minutes, and nothing outstays its welcome.

It also details what sounds like a full-blown identity crisis. 

It's obvious that success wasn't quite what Charli had envisioned, and these songs offer a witty, knowing take on her love-hate relationship with fame, taking in her bad-girl persona, acting career and 2025 wedding. 'It's complicated how I feel,' she sings on I'm Afraid. 'But I have to get it out, so my insides don't turn black.'

She opens with a mission statement. 'I think the dance floor is dead,' she tells us on Rock Music, a paean to loud guitars and stage diving, even if it does contain traces of her electro-pop past.

Charli XCX plays Reading and Leeds Festival on Friday 28 and Saturday 29 August.