“Put my flesh upon the cross until I scream,” intones a dry-throated Charli xcx on Wuthering Heights. Her atmospheric soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s new film leans hard, at times, into the script’s BDSM vibe. But while the big, lavish gloss of Fennell’s visual narrative slip-slides (often comically) around on the surface of the story, the grimy friction of Charli’s music claws its way back through the centuries to disinter Cathy and Heathcliff’s dark, damaged hearts. This is a record that conjures history in its use of violin, cello and double bass, but drags the strings’ horsehair romance violently into modernity over cold, muddy beds of industrial electronica.
In interviews, the artist born Charlotte Aitchison says she was touring her all-conquering, messy party album Brat in 2024 when she got a text from Fennell asking if she’d be interested in creating a soundtrack (she’d already composed original music for Emma Seligman’s 2023 dark comedy Bottoms). Exhausted from performing Brat’s erratic hyperpop, she found herself moving in the “opposite” direction with Wuthering Heights. Working with Finn Keane (who also co-produced Brat) Charli luxuriates in dreamier sonic territory, swapping the garish neons of her last album for gritty, pixelated shades of grey. There are nods to the layered grind of Nineties bands such as Nine Inch Nails and the aching, Sixties drawl-drone of The Velvet Underground.
