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New Music Highlights In Alternative Sounds

Charli XCX – “Rock Music”

Charli proclaimed the dance floor to be dead and threatened us with a good time with it, and she has now delivered. The problem is that sometimes listeners’ expectations get the best of them and ruin all of the fun. But isn’t that the essence of rock music anyway? — to create something that splits the room right down the middle between those who dare risk it all versus the vanilla types who might not get it because they like when art plays it safe and sounds exactly like what the imagined it would sound like when they invented their own narrative for it in their head?

With the reaction to “Rock Music”, it’s at least been telling who of the Angels probably aren’t putting her under-appreciated and equally divisive 2014 sophomore effort, Sucker — and all of its pop-punk and post-punk subversions — anywhere near the top of their list of favorite Charli XCX albums. If you were expecting a continuation of BRAT, you set yourself up for disappointment for no reason on that one when Wuthering Heights already made it a point to clean the slate of that era. If you were expecting a direct pivot to actual trad rock music, then clearly you don’t know how Charli operates that well either.

In this instance, it wouldn’t come as a surprise to find out that maybe she’s sharing inside jokes with her husband’s band in borrowing tropes from the most reductive style points while wrapping her own identity all around it. Electric guitars peel back in glitched riffs as her voice skips over itself to mark out its chorus. Drums bang hard as she patronizes crowd-killing and stage-diving, and its accompanying music video is filled with all of the usual cliché signifiers, from black leather to cigarettes. Expect plenty of nerve damage to be had from this one — maybe not from the headbanging, but the fact that — wow — she somehow still ended up making a pop song that’s better than 99% of what’s more obvious trying to be a hit.

Directed by: Aidan Zamiri