Charli XCX - Charli

2xLPs on 45rpm Black Vinyl During the five years between Sucker and her self-titled official third album, Charli XCX was busier than ever exploring the different sides of her music. Not only did she found her own label, Vroom Vroom, she wrote songs for and collaborated with a who's who of pop music. She also released two mixtapes, Number 1 Angel and Pop 2, that reflected her mercurial talent -- and her connections to pop's underground and mainstream -- better than either True Romance or Sucker did. With Charli, she attempts to capture the spontaneity of those releases in a more polished format; more often than not, she succeeds. This is especially true of the collaborations that dominate the album's first half, where she's joined by some of pop's best and brightest. "Gone," which teams Charli with Christine and the Queens, is a standout that combines the crisp, double-jointed synth pop of Chris with Charli's flair for pop fantasies into a bold '80s fever dream tailor-made for dance-off