'Brat': A party album gets real about human complexity

Brat

Charli XCX (Atlantic, 2024)

Am I crying, or is the lime green just searing my eyes? Brat, the latest dispatch from pop maverick Charli XCX, is packaged as a confrontationally trashy rave, and an arsenal of club-ready bangers (“Von Dutch,” “B2B,” and, obviously, “Club Classics”) deliver on exactly that promise. But the main reason I fell for Brat after feeling pretty take it or leave it about Charli’s back catalog is the disarming sincerity Trojan-horsed beneath that knowingly schlocky sheen. Unpeel that slime green sleeve and Brat reveals a surprisingly cohesive bittersweet and sour blend.

That sheer emotional breadth keeps Brat more interesting than the therapy-speak littering other stabs at “unfiltered” or “vulnerable” pop. The highs and lows of Charli’s “famous but not quite” status are a major lyrical concern, from the winking megalomania on “Von Dutch” to admitting her “career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all” on “I Think About It All The Time.” But Charli also mourns a late collaborator (“So I”), suffers panic attacks backstage (“Sympathy is a Knife”), and untangles complicated love/hate feelings about another artist who’s nothing like her despite how often “people say we’re alike” (“Girl, So Confusing”). There’s a lot on her mind, and Brat benefits from these facets jostling together.

It’s simple to brand Brat the two-faced Gemini it was born as, split between sincere songs and vapid party starters. But the record’s real throughline is how dichotomies between the body and its emotions sell the inherent complexity of our human experience short. The minimalist thumps and bleeps of all 15 tracks suggest that all kinds of dissonant feelings and sounds can exist within the same person. You can celebrate going “365 party girl” while you seriously contemplate pressing pause on that lifestyle to have a baby. Both experiences are equally human, and both emotions are equally sincere. Who said baring your soul couldn’t be a party?