“I’m famous, but not quite,” says Charli XCX on her 10th album. The admission is as bold, blunt, challenging, and vulnerable as the album on which it appears. BRAT is a hedonistic, ultraviolet collection of songs whose thumping – slightly disorienting – club beats more than succeed in their aim of “capturing a feeling of chaos”. Over thudding bass lines, you can imagine glasses of vodka and coke shuddering on the bar – imagine Jurassic Park, but the T rex is a subwoofer.
Across the album, the artist born Charlotte Aitchison blurts out the contradictions of relishing her cool status as a “cult classic” while still fretting over her weight and whether she “deserves commercial success” – all the while, sharply aware that it means little in the grand scheme of things.
