Consumer Guide Album

Charli XCX: Brat [Atlantic, 2024]
No matter what the gossip sheets are selling, this is not where Scottish-Gujarati-Ugandan beatmaker-in-spite-of-herself XCX buries the figurative hatchet with Irish-Croatian-Kiwi singer-songwriter-if-you-insist Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor d/b/a Lorde. That hatchet was imaginary, just for show. Instead this is where Charlotte Emma Aitchison d/b/a Charli XCX and also as the one-woman embodiment of everything we mean by "novelty act" arrays a bleeping nosegay of the kind of sound-effect hooks she's been known to apologize for when she was in a bad mood and put her own name or "name" on an album constructed from dance or "dance" tracks whose charm is a beaty artificiality that surpasseth understanding. After all, understanding is a bore. B+