As someone affected by chromesthesia — the involuntary ability to associate sound with its various shades — Charli XCX has forever viewed music in dramatically different colors. Some have taken on dark, cold, experimental tones (like “Pop 2” and her lockdown project, “How I’m Feeling Now”); others have adopted warmer shades that skew decidedly toward commercial, mainstream pop (a la “Sucker” and “Charli”).
With “Crash,” which she has declared is her last album for the Atlantic label, it’s abundantly clear which side of the color wheel she’s landed on for the moment: The avant-pop singer-songwriter-producer is heading face-first into rainbow’s end, with its multi-tints at their brightest and most obvious.
No more saving the more manifest and tart pop urgency for other female artists, as she has with her collaborations on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” and Selena Gomez’s “Same Old Love.” No more “letting the good ones go,” as she sings in her lowest register through the bouncing electro of “Good Ones.”
This time out, Charli XCX has kept her cannily dazzling stylings and most memorable melodies for herself and the craft of “Crash,” darting between the snowy-white likes of “Beg for You” (one of her most direct, romantic bangers) and red-hot hyperpop of “Baby,” with a stops at the cool-blue repetition on “Constant Repeat.”
Art? That difficult listening experience and icy remove she’s forged through all of her work? As she sings on the syn-drum-slapping “New Shapes” — recorded with old friends Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek — Charli’s letting others call that shot for now. Key line: “You call it art / But you pulled on my heart.”
You could get cynical about the reasons for her suddenly rounding her sharpest edges and imagine that “Crash” is Charli XCX’s sarcastic attempt at playing nice, or making convenient hits as its own art project. She normally drops hints at the top of every album cycle signaling what Charli-lovers should think, and some of this new album’s advance press and socials hinted at the conceptual art elements of “Crash” — with imagery that appears bloody (not unlike the Weeknd on 2020’s “After Hours”) and lustful of success — while her music veered another way, doing the heavy lifting of hit-making.
So maybe Charli XCX is kidding, or merely winking at us with all this pure pop. But at the very least “Crash” sounds sincere.
Her vocals, pure or AutoTune-d dry, ramp up every moment of “Catch” without ever seeming like an after-thought (which is a complain that could have been lodged with several of her past albums).The catchy theatricality of Prince-ly dancefloor cuts lke the title track, the formless ambience of “Move Me” and prickly power ballads such as “Every Rule” all benefit from her most lived-in, earnest vocals, even when they’re tinged with the robotic. The latter song, crafted in tandem with longtime co-producer A. G. Cook and avant-electro artisan oneohtrix Point Never, is a lurid, spacy vignette filled with deceit (“I know it’s unfair / I’m hurting someone else instead”) and sexual daring (“I want it this way / These moments really set me free”). It could pass for Charli XCX’s most passionate plea.
Is this the Charli XCX album that everyone has been waiting for (an obvious, full-bodied attempt at a hit), or the Charli XCX record that many of us feared (an obvious, full-bodied attempt at a hit)?
That depends on what you want from one of odd-pop’s true provocateurs. For all of the convenient “Crash” cuts poised for the dancefloor (like the cascading, Grandmaster Flash-inspired “Yuck”) or the pop charts (the genuinely lovely “Twice”), there is the occasional example of aggro atmosphere (“Lightning”) or wifty melody (“Move Me”) to send you off-kilter. And that’s fine. If she didn’t send you off-course, or self-sabotage, it wouldn’t be a Charli XCX album. Such toe-dipping within electropop’s diverse framework and its histrionic storytelling is delicious. It’s what made her 2019 “Charli” a moodily lyrical, mash-up marvel, and “Crush” even better in its clarity.
So, whether she means “Crash,” as some sort of elaborate art joke or her most direct-ever (potentially) hit-filled work, Charl XCX is going out from her longtime label with a bang.
