Review: CHARLI XCX – “Wuthering Heights”

Forget the acid green and kinetic hedonism of “Brat”. With “Wuthering Heights” Charli XCX takes off her global club kid armor and immerses herself in a chamber gothic that has more to do with the moors than with Ibiza. It's not a simple change of clothes, it's a change of temperature.

The operation was born as the soundtrack for Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel. Soundtracks, as a rule, are ancillary territories, free zones in an artist's catalogue. Here, however, the interstice becomes a laboratory. Charli uses the narrative constraint as a detonator.

The opening, House, it is a manifesto of intent. A song that attacks. The noise layering refers to Nine Inch Nails and its surroundings but the long shadow is that of John Cale, a ghostly presence who doesn't just limit himself to lending a voice. The strings hum, twist, haunt. It's pop disguised as a sound installation.

Wall of Sound and Eyes of the World, with Sky Ferreira, continue on an unstable ridge. The baroque is cracking, the industrial is becoming milky. Charli plays with atonality without fully embracing it. In Dying for You attempts to bridge rave breakdowns and dissonant architectures, evoking retro orchestral chill and a form of europop in a state of decomposition. The ambition is high.

The problem, if you can call it that, is a certain strategic prudence. Darkness is evoked, rarely left free to devour the song form. Control is felt. For a project that should embody the absolute obsession of Cathy and Heathcliff, the madness sometimes remains costumed.

The summit comes with the lock Funny Mouth. Here the writing becomes thinner, the beat becomes irregular, almost organic. The echo of Bjork's Homogenic comes to fruition. Charli stops acting and starts exposing herself. The voice doesn't dominate, it cracks. It is the only moment in which the romantic tragedy stops looking like a film set and becomes sound flesh.

“Wuthering Heights” is a very good transitional object, cultured and sometimes excessively aware of its intelligence. It serves to definitively close the “Brat” era and open a riskier but certainly more complex phase or perhaps it will just be a soundtrack chapter in his discography.

SCORE: 7.50

TO LISTEN NOW

House – Altars – Funny Mouth

TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY

Nothing. The record is cohesive and works from start to finish.

TRACKLIST