The BRAT review

Oh my gosh, Claudia AsterTracks got a review out less than four months after the album is out!

In all seriousness, I’ve been sitting on this review for a bit. It always feels weird to post long reviews about huge pop albums being an indie blog. Sometimes they’re just too long for MusicBoard though, so this one fit here.

In spite of being gay, formerly terminally online and generally a fan of modern-day pop, I have actually never liked an entire Charli xcx project. I remember a very awkward conversation with an ex once after she found out I find it very hard to get to the end of even the twelve and a half minutes of Vroom Vroom. In spite of all of this I still want to stay current and know what albums are coming out, so I gave BRAT a try and I’m sort of blown away, I absolutely love this one.

Something I noticed just minutes into BRAT is how the production is so bare and yet also feels so club ready. Opening track “360’s” beat is only about seven notes total with barely a drum loop but it feels huge anyway. A.G. Cook manages to make it feel huge with only two stems. The following “Club classics” is much bigger sounding but you’ve already been eased in, it gives the illusion of a non-radical change in tempo.

Speaking of easing in, Charli starts to show her emotions on “Sympathy is a knife.” Here she talks about intrusive, suicidal thoughts as well as a certain other artist who triggers her insecurities all while keeping the dance floor energy. We start to get a real glimpse into what the feel for the entire project will be from this point and she really drives it home, she can’t swallow any negativity, it’s not who she is. “I migh say something stupid” takes the mood down to its lowest and is sequenced very well with the only thing breaking my immersion being the production on the vocals. The entire track, while very short, sort of mismatches with the subject matter at hand production wise in a way the rest of the record does not. I actually think if it went right into “Talk talk” it would serve the album a lot better.

Be it my opinion of a song, the entire album or even Charli herself she makes it very clear it doesn’t matter to her at all. From the first song here she’s set up her audience to look in the mirror but turns it around to looking at her, it being remotely motivational to us is almost certainly an accident. All of “360” is positively self-centered, Charli emphasizes knowing whatever beat A.G. makes for her is going to be good, someone else liking it doesn’t matter in the least bit. On “Club classics” she talks about musicians she likes and includes herself in the list. She also, on all of BRAT name drops her fiance, people in her life, things in her day to day only she knows. On “Rewind” she talks about the contrast between being a normal kid and being a superstar and how she’s felt the highs and lows of both. It’s excellent because it isn’t laced with a cry for sympathy, it's a vivid portrait of someone who cannot dare show any weakness.

“So I” looks back on SOPHIE, the late producer and musician, in a way I have always genuinely seen her, someone whose as much a force of nature as they are a person. To me, SOPHIE is sort of mystical, I was never in pop scenes like this as a kid. Before coming out, I was afraid to like anything queer, especially if the person attached was trans, to me I felt it could too easily draw a map back to my own closeted experience. Now to hear a modern pop song talk about this person being gone as a constant, heartbreaking thing and maybe even someone she herself failed is show stopping on every spin. She sings on not knowing what to do and just watching videos of her when she heard. What are you actually supposed to do? I remember the day it happened on the internet so vividly; it was as if time stopped.

Guilty feelings keep me fractured, got a phone call after Christmas

Didn’t know how I should act, I watched you dance online

Your sounds, your words live on, endless

When I make songs I remember things you’d suggest

“Make it faster”

Would you like this one? Maybe just a little bit?

Again, we go back to masterful sequencing as right after “So I” is “Girl, so confusing.” It’s just a direct contrast track before it where Charli talks about a friend in the industry and wonders if they really have her best interest at heart. Originally here I had a section about not knowing who the subject of this track is and I originally took it out as it felt para-social to have the want for answers. Now we have answers, now we have a Lorde remix where it’s hashed out. While I think this makes the song sound sort of dry, I appreciate these two coming together to reconcile on a track and am happy for both on there being a sense of closure on something this heavy.

After this, however, the record takes a dip in excitement. Songs like “Apple” and “Mean girls,” if I’m being honest don’t really work for me and make BRAT feel sort of bloated. I do see value in “I think about it all the time” with the record being a look into her life and inner self but even at forty minutes there are quite a lot of songs, and I feel like this entire section could have been moved around if not trimmed down entirely.

I think all told what I like about this album more than the ones before it is it feels less like a pop project and more like someone’s audio journal set to their favorite genre. I think how I’m feeling now didn’t work for me in the same way because we were all feeling cooped up, no one could have lived these experiences but Charli. I want to give this a higher rating but I feel like it would be disingenuous. There’s an entire section of BRAT I don’t like, there are songs even before then I feel could be displaced and there’s exactly one snag in the track lists otherwise flawless sequencing. It is an excellent album regardless.

From there I originally had a section on the three more songs edition of the album. A drop I later learned was released to combat an artist trying to keep Charli off the charts in her own country. While I think “Hello goodbye” is more a Charli classic from the era I felt displaced from, “Guess” is a little silly and “Spring breakers” is a fun, imaginary movie cut, I ultimately wish this didn’t have to exist at all. New tracks and remixes with guests keep dropping from BRAT and I wish either a remix album would drop or the album could be put to rest.

Still, I’m feeling BRAT summer. This has been on rotation since release.