Charli XCX - Brat

on black ice vinyl Charli XCX might not be an upstart anymore, but she sure sounds like one on Brat. Though Crash, her first number one album in the U.K. and her first Top Ten album in the U.S., may have made her a bona fide pop star, her sixth album's edgy sounds and soul-baring songwriting aren't the moves of an artist resting on her laurels. Any worries that Crash's conceptual slickness meant she'd forsaken the hyperpop that built her reputation as an innovator are put to rest as she revisits that style -- as well as the sounds she grew up with as a club kid of the late 2000s and early 2010s -- with raw eloquence. Co-produced by XCX with longtime collaborators A.G. Cook and Easyfun as well as Gesaffelstein and the 1975's George Daniel, Brat's supersaturated sound amplifies her music's swaggering highs and vulnerable depths. With its motion-blur synths and streaking beat, "Von Dutch" lives up to the self-obsessed indie sleaze hedonism of its namesake; by contrast, "B2B"'s bumping rhy