Monthly Archives: July 2024

brat

Posted in Music by

brat
Charli XCX
2024

Monoculture is fried. That’s rarely more apparent than looking at the Billboard Hot 100, where I’ve tracked Chappell Roan slowly clawing her way since May toward the top 10, which has for weeks now been a few songs I’ve heard a lot (“Not Like Us”, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and “Please Please Please”, “Birds of a Feather”) and the “different America” country of Morgan Wallen, Benson Boone and Teddy Swims. There’s a Hozier song, “Too Sweet,” that’s been lodged there for weeks, and I’ve had conversations joking about Hozier that never mention it (it’s pretty good!) Songs by major artists like Cardi B, Doja Cat, and Travis Scott seem to hide on the charts for months without me ever knowing they exist.

The friends I have who do keep up with new releases are largely hooked on Chappell Roan, Four Tet, or Charli XCX’s new album brat, the last of which has so far peaked outside the top 40 with the Lorde remix of “Girl, so confusing.” It’s not bizarre that Charli XCX isn’t a chart-topper – it’s actually incredibly impressive that her arena tour is selling out 70% of all tickets given her previous sales history. But “The Algorithm” (or, more accurately, the four or five different algorithms) is feeding me new takes and memes on brat daily. It’s the biggest album since Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. if you’re on My Internet.

Part of that is that I’m queer. Charli’s association with hyperpop artists like SOPHIE, 100 gecs, and Rina Sawayama keeps Charli front of mind for queer pop music despite being straight herself. Among gay icons, she’s quite different from the more wholesome discopop yearning of Carly Rae Jepsen (straight,) the ethereal otherworldliness of Bjork (undefined), or the relatable fanfiction decoding of Taylor Swift (despite what the Gaylors will tell you, straight as far as we know.) Her music is about driving fast, doing party drugs, and having good sex – at least, when it’s not about the comedown.

Charli XCX, producer A.G. Cook, and fiance/collaborator George Daniel discuss album closer 365.

Executive producer A.G. Cook anchors a dance-forward collection of electronic beats alongside a host of collaborators, including Hudson Mohawke, Easyfun, Gesaffelstein, and Charli’s fiance George Daniel. Some of it is on the accessible, dancy side, like the city walk friendly “360” where Charli declares she’s “so Julia.” It’s unsurprising that “Apple” has gone viral on Tiktok given its bouncy vocals and the delightful trip to the airport in the hook. Other songs are down in the pit, like the driving beat of “Club classics” or the groove of “B2b.” brat is cohesive without being repetitive, ensuring something like the piano riff at the end of “Mean girls” or the harmonies on the hook of “Talk talk” create a texture for listening through the full album.

What makes brat so remarkable is its more emotional side – and I actually don’t think it’s consistent throughout the album. Songs like “Sympathy is a knife” and “I might say something stupid” match similar songs on Charli (2019) and how i’m feeling now, somewhat abstract about an emotional experience, expressing something that marries style and substance. This is a traditional pop vulnerability, as it expresses a relatable feeling with a very pointed form of artistry. “Sympathy is a knife” and the album closer “365” are probably the most obvious instant classics from the album on the more serious side.

It’s in the back half, opening up with “So I”, that Charli abandons abstraction entirely. Charli’s elegy for SOPHIE is incredibly direct about their relationship, emotionally vulnerable about how Charli actually wasn’t always an especially good friend, vulnerable about not wanting to sing the songs that survived. It maybe never gets more startling than on “I think about it all the time,” a bouncy, delightful melody very explicitly about Charli meeting her friends’ baby and questioning her career against opportunity for motherhood. This isn’t dressed up poetically, isn’t guarded in platitudes. It’s more direct than most people would be with their own therapist. The “Girl, so confusing” remix with Lorde defusing their “beef” and hearing Lorde just as directly address their relationship and her own battle with fame and anorexia exposes just how radical this style feels.

When people describe lyrics as “anecdotal,” they usually just mean that they describe an experience you can relate to – that story is still usually told using the rhetorical devices of storytelling, with entertaining jokes, clever rhymes, strong imagery. They do not usually just involve phrases like “She’s a radiant mother and he’s a beautiful father/And now they both know these things that I don’t” to end verses. It’s beyond conversational, because if you had a conversation with someone this unguarded you’d usually be uncomfortable. This kind of radical transparency isn’t 100% new, especially as you dig into album-oriented artists’ deep cuts. But even within the context of a great pop album like brat, it feels revolutionary. If brat is an all-timer (it’s been a month, folks – I’m not ready to commit to that yet!) it’ll be one that marks transition into an authenticity you can’t mistake for another submission from the tortured poet’s department.

KEY TRACKS: “Sympathy is a Knife,” “Girl, so confusing,” “I think about it all the time,” “365”
VERSION: the three more songs so it’s not version – the three songs are all really good!
CATALOG CHOICE: Vroom Vroom, Charli
NEXT STOP: 1000 gecs, 100 gecs
AFTER THAT: Chris, Christine and the Queens

R.I.P. Shelley Duvall

Posted in Film by

Watching Shelley Duvall’s 70s work, I find myself confronted by an unvarnished truth. In a movie like 3 Women, Duvall plays both the underlying frustration and the surface level facade of genial perfection with equal honesty. Neither should qualify as a spoiler – compare first this clip of Millie’s genial side, and then this one of a milder snap. There is a truth to what many consider a mask – it is a presentation of the idealized self, sure, but our ideals can also be part of us. Duvall performs a psychological complexity that many misunderstand. The ugly things we say are not truer than the kind ones just because our politeness holds us from saying them. The things we say to wound based out of rash impulse are not inherently “more honest” than the ones we use to glide above anger and social mismatch. I think Millie is being honest in both clips, and it’s given to us as the audience to read her reaction to Mildred (Sissy Spacek) for what she’s feeling.

Duvall’s Millie, like many of her characters, isn’t psychologically complex because she’s an obvious intellectual. If anything, Duvall’s characters are often defined by a sort of cluelessness, either by living simple lives or ignoring red flags. Part of it is just that she’s damned funny. She was funny in Nashville as an outrageous boy-crazy It Girl flown in from L.A. Funny as the disreputable (and insightful) Countess Gemini in Jane Campion’s otherwise po-faced The Portrait of a Lady. Funny as the Astrodome tour guide who hooks up with Bud Cort’s Brewster McCloud in her first on-screen role. But she was also funny in real life, in profiles like the 2021 THR piece Searching for Shelley Duvall, a profile in which she dispels some of the more despairing images of her struggles with mental health and trauma. (I’m saving thoughts on The Shining for its own piece, but Duvall is the real masterful performance in the film. Suffice it to say that I believe her repeated account that Kubrick was warm and friendly and that the work of making The Shining was emotionally exhausting for almost everyone involved.)

Duvall in Vogue.

Maybe more than anything, the throughline of Shelley Duvall’s canon confronts our understanding of who gets to be iconic. Part of it is the colorful aesthetic that defined her personal fashion – it’s no surprise looking at her combinations of color and pattern that she’d become invested in children’s programming and fairy tales. That aesthetic means a lot to me. Looking at some of Duvall’s choices of clothing invokes a sense of comradery. It’d be too simple to call it “camp,” but there are choices in her makeup and her wardrobe that expand my own sense of queer euphoric fashion.

It’s also her choice in roles, bringing that complex version of emotional vulnerability to characters of all classes, levels of status, and ranging from victims of abuse to literal cartoon characters. I haven’t seen a couple of the landmark Duvall films. Many of my friends mourning Duvall have posted scenes from Robert Altman’s Popeye, a reclaimed gonzo blockbuster adapting the classic cartoon – it’s hard to imagine a more obvious Olive Oil. Two of her 70s Altman collaborations, Thieves Like Us and Buffalo Bill and the Indians, remain on my queue. I’ve heard a lot of love for her work in the original live-action Frankenweenie, and I’ve seen none of her children’s programming at an age I’m old enough to remember. I’m thankful for a little more Shelley Duvall on my horizon. I’m glad she passed celebrated by her friends and community for all the beauty she brought into the world.

Shelley Duvall on her birthday last year, celebrating with a fan turned friend.