I like to imagine that, in 2016, there was a fan of “Boom Clap” and “Break The Rules” who paid for a digital download of a new Charli xcx EP, pressed play on “Vroom Vroom,” and spat it out like spoiled milk. In other words, the hard pivot of “Rock Music,” her cheeky, too-brief new single, has precedent. You could call Charli a troll for constantly flipping the script on her own success. Or, you could see her for what she is. An art-school kid: brave, brazen and curious about whatever the hell she can do next.
In some ways, “Rock Music” is reactionary, with discourse-bait lines like “I think the dancefloor is dead” or “real incestuous vibes.” It’s too short to fully sink its teeth in, clipping out on one syllable of “Rock” (“Ro-ro-ro-ro-ro”). Its metallic guitars are pulled right from Soft Rock, the 2023 collaborative album from A.G. Cook and Finn Keane under the moniker Thy Slaughter.
But I hear it as a necessary reset. For an artist whose last album was preoccupied with the endless Artistic Project of Being A Celebrity, “Rock Music” finds Charli back to her roots. No, this is not a “back-to-basics,” Boomer-bait, rustic project we might expect from its title. But it expresses the freedom she finds in making a thing: pick up the guitar, jump off the stage, try hard. When the bratty bandwagon leaves you behind, at least you’ve still got the band.
review by Andy Steiner
order “Rock Music” by Charli xcx HERE
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