Review: how i'm feeling now - Charli XCX
By Kenny Cox
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when life began screeching to a halt as quarantine became reality around the world, many cited Shakespeare as a sign that artistic expression could triumph in isolation. In his period of lockdown during the 1606 plague in London he created King Lear, a work that would go on to be hailed and studied centuries later. The reality is that many of us haven’t made our King Lear in quarantine, opting to bake sourdough bread and binge TikTok videos instead. But one such artist has risen to the challenge of the Bard — Charli XCX. Just over one month ago she announced her latest LP how i’m feeling now, writing, recording, creating visuals, promoting, and finally dropping the record in the span of a few weeks. As a result, it might just be the King Lear of our era, a work of artistic genius made during chaotic, life-changing times.
While her latest LP, 2019’s Charli, attempted to bring Charli’s sound to the mainstream, how i’m feeling now is a return to the glitching, abrasive, seemingly otherworldly pop that she mastered with 2017’s Pop 2. Working again with PC Music head A.G. Cook, Charli cooks up songs of Britney-tier pop genius that echo through the techno-wastelands of the Wachowskis. “Pink Diamond,” the record’s opener, slams into full gear immediately, with screeching metallic samples, chords that shoot through the track like laser beams, and Charli rattling off lyrics with a rapid-fire flow, kicking off the party, whether virtual or not, from the album’s opening seconds. “Claws,” one of the record’s greatest moments, would be a standard-issue pop sing-along for anyone else, but with Charli’s knack for killer hooks, along with production by 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady, it’s a crashing, buzzing banger of a track, glorious in it’s repetition and charisma.
But quarantine is getting to Charli, as social distancing is practically antithetical to her work. An artist known for her features as much as her solo work, what is there to do when she cannot call artists like Sophie, Cupcakke, Kim Petras, Christine and the Queens, or Pabllo Vittar to the studio? With no features, and few collaborators, Charli looks inward throughout the album, capturing the self-doubt, longing, and grief resulting from isolation. “C2.0,” a remix of “Click” from her last record, flips the track’s braggadocious energy to one of sadness, wishing she could be reunited with the friends and collaborators she has grown close to over the years: “My clique running through my mind like a rainbow/I miss them every night/I miss them by my side.”
“Enemy” captures Charli loving, but hesitant about where this love might end up, with those closest to her bringing the most pain at love’s end. “Maybe you’re my enemy/Now I’ve finally let you come a little close to me” sings Charli at the chorus, wanting love but fearing the effects of intimacy and vulnerability. Her writing taps into the conflict that has risen within isolation, where one’s relationships become strengthened, but the physical feeling of being around loved ones out in the real world is gone until further notice.
The best tracks on how i’m feeling now combine these dual feelings of Charli in isolation, creating top-tier, explosive hooks out of the harsh reality that quarantine has created. Again collaborating with Dylan Brady on “Anthems,” Charli makes a new kind of party track, one that laments the loss of it, while demanding to be played at the highest volume possible. “I want anthems/late nights/my friends/New York” shouts Charli over Brady’s maximalist, cranked-to-11 production. In the absence of the club, Charli has created an intergalactic mosh pit of a track that might just be enough to replace the real thing for the time being. But even without the parties, 4 AM raves, and big cities, Charli has found something else to connect with: love. “Forever” is perhaps some of the best work in Charli’s career, a warm, swooning love song paired with the thrashing, dissonant production she has mastered. Even outside of quarantine it would be a fantastic track, but Charli’s lyrics about keeping love alive as the world makes being closer impossible hit even harder as isolation drags on endlessly.
With how i’m feeling now, Charli XCX has pulled off the impossible — not just making a record within the span of four short weeks, but creating a glistening pop album that nails the feelings of living through world-upending change in real-time. It might feel like quarantine has no end in sight, but Charli XCX is there to guide us through until the next late-night moment of hedonistic euphoria is achievable again.
BOPS: “Pink Diamond”, “Forever”, “Claws”, “Anthems”, “Party 4 U”
DUDS: "I Finally Understand"
