Charli XCX – BRAT

In dropping her new album, BRAT, at the top of summer (and of Pride month), Charli XCX clearly knows what she's doing. As we enter the few weeks of the year in which Scotland could plausibly be said to have tank-top-and-mini-skirt weather, it's the perfect time to bump Charli's album about being hot, young and on the verge of existential crisis. 

The album opens with the already-popular single 360; this and the following track, Club Classics, set a generally party-oriented tone. That tone never goes away (don't worry), but the album begins to twist with Sympathy Is a Knife, a shockingly honest banger. What follows is a series of self-assessments and thesis statements. Taking a step back from the track list, the album looks like a memoir, a diary, or a poetry collection. 

Boiled down, many of the tracks on BRAT are about 'The Self', about coming of age during endless periods of tragedy and instability. I Think About It All the Time (the track, not the statement) has me listening open-mouthed, stopped dead in the middle of my little afternoon walk. The track wonders about having children; it asks what we might have to give up to change our lives, and what we have maybe given up already. I do think about it all the time, now. BRAT comes together in a genius way; it's literary, musically complex and somehow effortless. Not to mention, perfectly suited for when you need to cry at the club. 

Listen to: Everything Is Romantic; Girl, So Confusing; Mean Girls