The Essex-raised, hugely successful star Charlotte Emma Aitchison’s sixth album is a far more nuanced than her last, 2022’s Crash, still embracing mainstream pop and dance, but also with ironic twists, sleazy fun, humour, and a dirtier, more underground sound of her more experimental past, influenced by the likes of Aphex Twin to Hudson Mohawke. The video for 360 opens with a parody of marketing and fame. Club Classics also comes as ironic, considering it’s the very stuff of her oeuvre but also enjoying the dubstep sound. She seems to be having her cake and eating it, subverting and enjoying, guzzling and throwing it up, shamelessly being commercial and shallow but also suddenly throwing in odd profundities. Von Dutch captures a familiar clubbing sound of 2006’s turbo-revving Bodyrox hit Yeah Yeah, but has perhaps deliberately hollow ring. I Might Say Something Stupid is a slow ballad, but also captures celeb party embarrassment with comedy moments: “I don’t feel like nothing special / I snag my tights out on the lawn chair … I’m famous but not quite.” So Confusing sizzles with a fabulous groove and also plays with that ongoing theme of dual identity “You're all about writing poems / But I'm about throwing parties / Think you should come to my party / And put your hands up / I think we're totally different / But opposites do attract.” So I is a dynamic but also tragic tribute to former collaborator and sadly missed innovator Sophie who is also one of several creatives referenced throughout the album. Everything Is Romantic opens rippling orchestra, but morphs into a talky list of material goods and empty ideals, melting ironic ephemera to a club dance beat: “Bad tattoos on leather-tanned skin / Jesus Christ on a plastic sign, mm / Early nights in white sheets with lace curtains / Capri in the distance.” And closer plays with the thought of motherhood capturing that overworked sense of circularity of time and continually putting it off: I Think About It All The Time. Vocoder and commercial cliches abound, and what’s evident is an expression of great affection for the dance music genre, but scratch below the surface there are in-jokes, self-doubts, smart ironies and subversions aplenty. Out on Atlantic Records.
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