Vortex's Album of the Year List '24

Lynks is very gay. That's probably important to know; their debut album ABOMINATION is unapologetically queer, sex-filled, and abrasive.

I actually first heard Lynks on the radio; it was the production that drew my attention, and that's immediately noticeable on ABOMINATION too. Their voice is distorted, tinny, recessed, and they don't really even sing! Imagine that. Yet their delivery is so compelling, punctuated by heavy, repetitive bass and odd production flourishes everywhere. When you hear a Lynks track, you know it's a Lynks track.

But, of course, this album is about more than sounding good. It's a full-throated celebration of queer and gay culture, but what's more unique is how its problems are highlighted too. You're plunged straight into this with USE IT OR LOSE IT, a irony-fuelled description of gay men's obsession with chasing youth: "And I still don't know what it means to be a gay man over 40/Unless I'm Ian McKellen or Grahan Norton/It's what every film, TV show, book has taught me/My life ends the day I'm not invited to the orgy". ...Yeah, sounds about right.

A whole album about this might sound a little sombre, but these tracks never take themselves too seriously. New Boyfriend, a chugging dance anthem, is so potently unserious that you can't help but laugh ("You said we were gonna be friends/Say it with me: Friends don't give each other head!"). It's fizzy, infectious, and very fun.

Then comes CPR, which, yes, is actually about CPR. Probably. For a song that never mentions sex, this is... very sexy? That's kink for you, I guess. If you, too, want a handsome man to break your ribs, you'll like this track! It helps that it sounds so damn good, too; Lynks has a very distinct production style that's very warm without losing any of its edge. Next comes (WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FROM) SEX WITH A STRANGER, an absolute favourite of mine. Featuring one of the chewiest, bounciest synths I've ever heard and a breakneck persistence, Lynks bemoans the sorry state of hookup culture, projecting their moral compass onto potentially judgemental women on the Underground. Romance isn't dead, it's just in a coma! This kind of sums gay culture up; everyone wants sex, everyone knows that it's not going to be good sex, and yet you gotta do it! There's nothing of substance to be found, but yet we chase "some intimacy, without the intimacy" for eternity. Lynks sums up the scene with such succinctness, such accuracy, and it's something I haven't particularly seen anyone else talking about it. Respect.

After this minor existential crisis, Lynks spends the midpoint of ABOMINATION spiralling deeper into depression. Tennis Song, in which Lynks finds a potential match after taking up tennis only to find out the suitor was not only straight but in a relationship, shows exactly why gay men turn to quick sex rather than relationships: it kind of sucks finding a boyfriend! It's hard, and painful, and not very fun. The song sounds very numb, which only adds to the sense of misery.

Then we get I FEEL LIKE SHIT. Industrial bass, frothy drums, deadpan delivery, "On a scale of one to nine, I'm a zero out of ten"; they just feel like shit, and the therapy apps, self-care industry, and infinite exercise tips aren't exactly making them feel better. It is what it is.

The album picks up again with ABOMINATION, a slimy, throbbing mess of a track in the best way possible. By this point, the gay track tackling Christian homophobia has been done many times before, but as always there's a Lynksian twist here; a touch of the macabre in a few killer lines that are wholly serious for the first time on the album. You can see why it's the title track.

There's more sincerity in the back half of this project; we get more exhaustion in SMALLTALK, and "I'm so happy I could die" energy in LUCKY. For me, though, Lynks is best when they're completely off the rails, and we get a lot of that in LYNKS THINKS*.

Hearing this for the first time is exactly like witnessing the coming of Christ. This is what Lynks is all about! Being queer, celebrating it, and going hard as fuck at the same time. I love this album because it expresses thoughts about things I've long felt needed to be discussed more whilst being a damn good time. Hell of a first album. I can't wait to see what Lynks makes next.

Metalheads are always complaining. It's kind of their thing. The common refrain as of late has been that there's a lack of "big" metal bands that are actually good, or even interesting. Bring Me The Horizon hasn't wholly escaped those criticisms in the past, and the skepticism only ramped up with the recent departure of a key member, but with POST HUMAN: NeX GEn they've proven they're worthy of the legacy left for them by the legendary bands of old.

For one thing, this shit sounds damn good! Guitar shreds like the ones in intro track YOUtopia are compressed into fleshy, wet crunches of noise, and lead vocalist Oli Sykes is front and centre with that signature rasp and surprisingly nimble range. It's something he flexes often on this project, hanging just above gnashing drums with ease. Kool-Aid is the track I first heard off the album, and it's everything pop metal should be; gloriously self-indulgent, sexy, and fuzzy, with an immense hook that was BUILT for arena-filling speakers.

It's also impressive how willing BMTH have shown themselves to be in inviting newer genres into the metal fold. Tracks like Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd, p.u.s.s.e and R.i.p. (duskCOre remix) bring hyperpop and jungle elements of abrasive stuttering and incredibly heavy, thumping beats and combine them with an increasingly experimental metal sound that makes for one of the most engaging listens of the year.

There's just straight heaviness here, too, like liMOusIne, a track with heavy Deftones vibes and a doomcore cadence. Already sounds pretty compelling, right? Take that track and put AURORA, a folksy, elfin singer/songwriter on the top, tying her voice inbetween Oli's yowls and cresting over the top of dirty screams. Does it sound good? Of course it does, and the cherry on top of the poisoned cake is one of the most romantic bridges I've ever heard: "So lock all the doors/Cos I'm insecure" resolves all the tension you didn't even know had built up.

That sums NeX GEn up perfectly, really; take damn good metal and blend it up with whatever was at hand, whether that's utilising Gupi's talents to churn Undertale Sans' laughs into chirpy, knives-out chugdowns or silly breakcore drums into a track about existential crises on LosT. It's everything modern metal should be; fearless, SO damn emo, and thrilling at all times. You know this fucking rips in concert. Metal's doing well, guys.

Billie Eilish has been one of my favourite artists out for a hot minute, and the announcement that her latest project, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, would not have any singles prior to release... Be still my beating heart! The commitment to the album as an artform in itself is rare these days, and so it got me very very excited for this record. After a sophomore album that recieved middling reviews, bogged down by a surplus of singles that obscured the absolute gems hidden in the tracklist, I was looking forward to the much tighter third album. Man, does she deliver.

I remember this album coming out and me being completely godsmacked at how damn solid it was, top to bottom. Two tracks in, we get LUNCH, the most openly lesbian track you could possibly ask for. ("It's a craving, not a crush/I just wanna get her off"). Wait, holy shit, Billie Eilish swings both ways?? Yes indeed, and this is the first time we got confirmation! It's a chewy track, too; drenched in 90's grunge, vocals treated with the lightest touch, and just the right amount of edge. It's so damn fun, man.

Pushing on, CHIHIRO is unreasonably good. Subdued, thirsty bass laps over Billie's dry, lilting expressions of a push/pull relationship, exploding into immense meaty synths that are pitch-perfect. Speaking of pitch, Eilish's voice has never sounded this good before, soaring over her previous quiet delivery to deliver cloudlike punches to the gut at every opportunity, and just when you think the song has peaked she delivers one of the best verses of her career. Her writing is tight and vivid throughout, actually, but it really shines here: "Wringing my hands in my lap/When you told me it's all been a trap/And you don't know if you'll make it back/I said no, don't say that" This kind of writing is impeccably vague, allowing feeling to shine through without specifics clouding the rays. An absolute epic of a song.

CHIHIRO goes straight into BIRDS OF A FEATHER, which is quite simply one of the best feelings I've ever had listening to music. It's seratonin in a song, from the gorgeous textured bass to Billie's expressions of absolute, joyful, self-sacrificing love. This is damn good pop, guys! "I knew you in another life/You had that same look in your eyes/I love you, don't act so surprised".

Billie's never been this romantic before; nestled deep in the petalled guitars of WILDFLOWER is simmering emotion that crests over into raw feeling as the track blooms into a fevered mess. This song has grown on me the most out of all of them.

What makes this album so good is the devotion to experimentation outside of Billie and Finneas' usual style. You hear it in THE GREATEST, a gorgeous song reminiscent of Happier Than Ever's best track where she pushes even further into the rock genre. But the real standouts come later, in the form of L'AMOUR DE LA VIE. It's so meaty and satisfying in its first half, condemning a lovebombing partner. All fine stuff, until out of nowhere there is a complete tonal shift. Synths! The flattest drums you've ever heard, autotune, a yowl, lyrics shooting out out like daggers (sparingly and furiously), and now the former half of the track is recontextualised; despite the emotional restraint, this is how Billie really feels. It's stunning.

From here, we get THE DINER, which is spooky as fuck. It's narrated from the point of view of Billie's stalker; ("You could be my wife") he follows her down the street, climbs over her fence, leaves a calling card... sees her in the car with her boyfriend, finds her phone number, and threatens to kill anyone who gets close to her. Not a fun time, and it's pretty brave of Billie to tell it this way; often the main thing stalkers want is attention.

BITTERSUITE is like a mix of CHIHIRO and L'-AMOUR; drenched in wet, firm synths, then plunged deeper into the depths and planted firmly in the realm of "weird". What makes it, however, is the transition; really, this album has twelve tracks. Billie drowns, pitchshifts out of centre stage, in her place a grief-stricken synth and quiet whispers. The synth whispers to us, and it's only after BLUE begins that we understand BITTERSUITE as an introduction. BLUE is stunning, a collation of three tracks cut from three different eras of Billie and picked up, assembled into one stunner of a track. It has the absolute best chorus on the album; like its precursor, the synth, Billie's voice is laced with pain, until it's submerged again, accompanied by the best lyrics she's ever penned: "You were born bluer than a butterfly/Beautiful and so deprived of oxygen/Colder than your father's eyes/He never learned to sympathize with anyone". Spooky, and it gets spookier when the bottom falls out of the track, giving way to the bass that hits you as hard as it can; pitchshifted voice, morphing back into reality with hard kicks and... is that the violin from SKINNY?

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is the best thing Billie's ever made, hands down. Even before pop was flipped on its head by the newcomers, Billie showed that she could still make something that pushed the culture forward. Both painfully emotional and achingly brutal, she's created another project we'll look back on as redefinining the pop landscape.

...but when can I hear the next one?

I've been following Lola Young since her very first EP, 2020's Renaissance. None For You was one of my top songs of that year, but I haven't checked out a project of hers since.

It was to my complete surprise, then, that This Wasn't Meant For You Anyway is one of the tightest records of the year. Gone are the muted piano and restrained vocals of Renaissance; now, explosive choruses and meaty guitar riffs fill the silence at every opportunity. The introductory track Good Books sees Young subsumed by the foam of percussion, lamenting the dismissiveness of her boyfriend in restraint-laced lines bubbling over with emotion ("I work hard to stay in your good books/But you don't read, so why do I try?").

Subsequent track Wish You Were Dead sees that restraint come completely undone; punches are thrown, phones chucked out of windows, and cops are called, and it's so fucking MESSY and unrestrained that you feel every word like a bloody orange sucker punch. You could say that about every song on here, really; emotion oils every cog, greasing it into imperfect life. Young practically spits every line of Conceited, an ugly and burnt woozy rage-track, straight through the middle of some of the most interesting production I've heard on this kind of record in a damn long time.

There is some tenderness here, too; you can hear it in the warmth of Walk On By's chorus and You Noticed. The latter track is almost a perfect foil for Good Books, which is just a really beautiful way of leading the album into a circle.

Being honest though, Lola's at her best when she's angry, horny or both, and Fuck ticks at least one of those boxes perfectly. Goddamn this is a sexy song. Really: "You got bitches in your inbox/I wanna see how much you make, I know it's lots/You better show me how that thing works/Cos you know you're gonna make my panties drop"

just saying. I'm just saying!

Anyway, this is absolutely one of my top 10 albums of this year. It's loud, warm, violent, horny, and almost perfectly coiled. There's no filler here, just raw feeling, and I appreciated that a lot in a year of sincere incinserity.

I first heard of Gupi by way of food house, their collaborative project with Fraxiom. That album is so completely off-the-wall and unserious that it's kind of hard to tell that the production underneath the mess was genuinely impressive; "Fuck Notch, fuck Musk, and I'll piss on Zedd" might give me incomprehensible amounts of serotonin, but it was kind of hard to tell whether this stuff was actually good or whether that was just the Tiktok-vaporised part of your brain talking. Much of Gupi's early work was devoted to the brainrot inherent in much of modern hyperpop; there's LSD-infused supergoop in albums like paper eater and particularly glow-zone. The former is layered and dense. The latter is dumbed-down lobotomy-hyperpop, which did not get a particularly warm reception.

In general, Gupi's faced accusations of being "brainrot music" for as long as they've been around. I guess it pissed them off, because puppeteer my corpse at the renegade please is very dark, very cold, and very considered.

For one, these tracks are pretty damn long! wheyaa wheyaa, the opener, is 4 minutes and 49 seconds. That's not nothing, especially when those minutes are used to layer incredibly well. The key difference that's immediately noticeable compared to something like paper eater is how cold this track is; often in hyperbass/electronic music, you're hit with eight million different elements at once. wheyaa wheyaa lays it all out for you to hear and understand right off the bat, which is not something you'd expect from an artist known for their incomprehensibility. Also, the drops here are insane; you're looking at some of the darkest bass you can get grating against spiky, fuzzy layers of buzzing noise. It's impressive. For the longest time Gupi hasn't particularly liked to show their working, but here everything's on display.

Mindcrush takes this a step further, moving away from the frenetic energy to something both more understandable and a lot more weird. There's loops in loops, sounds warping and shifting to occupy spaces on the frequency that crest in and out of primary focus. Then we're right back to the frenetic energy with freaks, a track that utilises much more of a "pop" framework. You're getting one main synth that pushes in front of everything... until the switchup. Fuzzy, cavernous bass clears out the track, being recycled later to add some extra punch. It's thrilling and a hell of a lot more digestible than anything else made by Gupi.

strong independent crybaby is the "hit" of the EP, if you could call a song with eighteen thousand plays that. It's not hard to see why; a lot of the time electronic bubblegum bass feels like it was constructed for the sole purpose of sounding cool, which is fine. independent crybaby is better than that, because there's emotions being pushed at you through the title, vocal samples, and overall murkiness you can hear here. There's a moment where a lot of the loops clear to make way for this immense, dramatic synth that's mixed much closer to the ears than much of the previous instrumentation, and yeah, it feels cinematic! I sometimes struggle to find purpose or emotion in electronic music, but this has it in droves.

The closer ready is again much more subdued than you'd expect from Gupi. The clarity they've afforded themselves here works wonders; though there's never silence, every single drum pattern and synth is mixed to be right where it should be. It feels mature, much like this whole EP. Gupi's found a perfect balance between restraint and overproduction, and man does it sound good.

Sega Bodega's 2021 album Romeo was one of my favourite albums to come out of that year, with its icy production and sudden drops into harshness. With Dennis, Sega takes that same ice and recontextualises it into a cold dreamworld.

The album follows Salvador's alter ego, Dennis, into a disturbed slumber, with caustic fizzes of drum and synth following in his wake. Adulter8 sets the scene perfectly; Sega's vocals are barely distinguishable, submerged in a haze. Only a single word is visible amidst the clouds; "Seduce". And seduce it does, with bass notes colliding into each other as if in perpetual motion, a singular synth zigzagging its way between frequencies.

The concept of voice as texture, expressing concepts rather than thoughts, shines on Kepko in particular. It's very hard to tell what Salvador is actually saying; tripping over the words at breakneck speed, he tries to "Press up on the stem, release the violets/Huff you up til you're just a colour I can't see" again and again. You'd be forgiven for thinking this was meaningless, but that's kind of the point; the concept of intention is what drives the record forward. Combined with Sega's best production yet; carbonated synthwork, bass that cracks and warps into abstract percussion, and vocals massaged into something barely human. This is something more ambitous than genre labels could describe.

Much like a dream, these tracks both flow perfectly and take you to entirely new places. Take Set Me Free, I'm an Animal; it's one of the more lucid tracks on the album, with production hinting at organic elements streaming with machine-like smoothness into industrial spasms and throbbing drums. Yet this track fits perfectly next to Deer Teeth, one of the best songs Salvador's ever made, with its cold-sweat-esque leaning forward and backwards into throbbing kicks that propel it in perpetuity. There's an honest-to-god club track buried in here too, with the absolute best example of a kickass synth pulling all the weight. It feels euphoric and feverish yet never fully resolves. After all, we're still in a coma.

Sega's production can feel a little too good at times; on albums like Shygirl's NYMPH, his sound felt slightly too polished for the kind of dirty club-bass Shy excels at. But here he proves that all that polish was for a reason. Who else could make something like Tears & Sighs with its halting crumbles of sound and deep, dark vocals? It really does feel otherworldly. So many times on this record, you just have to sit back and marvel at how confident every track sounds. There's nary a stutter here, even in Humiliation Doesn't Leave a Mark, the most expansive track. It's immense and dramatic, and the featured verse from Maya Alkhateri (one half of their band Kiss Facility) really cements Salvador's place as one of the best producers of this decade.

Dennis is a unanimous victory, proof that Sega Bodega can execute any concept he puts his mind to. It's far too compelling to ever sleep on.

I am convinced Magdalena Bay are wizards. How else could they make a pop album this perfect?

Seriously, though; if there was a perfect album this year, it would be Imaginal Disk. I first heard of this album on Twitter, heralded as the "Brat killer". By that, the Twitter people meant it was better than BRAT, which was at the time one of the ten most acclaimed albums of all time. High praise, right? So I went into it with a cautiously positive mindset (if not wholly sold; Twitter is not exactly a reliable source). So it was VERY rewarding when intro track She Looked Like Me! began... because yeah, it's that good.

It's in the precision of every sound, how the buzzes and chirps creep up on you to swirl over your head until you don't even notice that your feet are off the ground. How there's never a "safe" track to be found here, how EVERY SINGLE SONG is impeccably produced, constructed and mixed. From the creeping sandy vines of Killing Time's drums that build into something resembling a very scary metal-esque track, or Image's...

Actually, line break. Image. Oh my god. This is one of the best songs I have ever heard, hands-down. It's in the cleanness of the synths, the slamming sounds that are incredibly loud yet barely-there that add more than any in-your-face bass could, in the bass! The bass sounds so alive, and so perfect! In the gleaming future-sparkle that punctuates each verse, in the whisper-angel touch of every barely uttered line, in the moment everything hangs in suspension for just a moment and CRASHES to the floor with an eruption of messy, orgasmic vibrations. This would already push the album past mediocrity by itself and to follow it up with Death & Romance? DEATH AND ROMANCE? Like, holy shit! It genuinely does not get much better than this in the world of pop, and it just keeps going! Fear, Sex is fucking gorgeous, laden with hisses and pulses of future-bass that combine to create a glistening, indecipherable machine, Vampire in the Corner has a beautiful leafy chorus, Watching T.V is a masterclass in mixing, tension-building, and subversion of expectations (the glitch-filled screams peaking the mic genuinely spooked me)...

I could go on, but it would be remiss of me to ignore how much of a step change Tunnel Vision is for the album. All that tension left unresolved in previous tracks warps into a furry horror-rock track, with vocals subsiding and minutes of pure instrumentation in some of the keenest instrumentation I've heard on a pop record in a while. And then we go straight into Love is Everywhere! A gorgeous, warm track that's completely different to the previous one, with motifs borrowed from She Looked Like Me! in a beautiful cyclical nod. In fact, Like Me! is everywhere on this album if you look hard enough.

From here the tracks feel like more of a victory lap than anything else. The groove dial is turned up to eleven on That's My Floor and Cry For Me, two legendary synth-drenched tracks that prove whatever Magdalena Bay touch turns to gold. This whole album really is golden. It might not be my favourite of the year, but is it the most perfect? The most compelling? I think so.

Jane hated this album for a very long time, according to a tweet that has been deleted (but definitely existed). I can understand why; for someone who, at 17, was able to make something like Frailty (a genre-inventing album), Census Designated is incredibly distinct, so completely different from everything that came before it that it would be understandable if some listeners (and Jane herself, a notorious perfectionist) were turned off at first. But generally, when a creator is afraid of their own creation, it's because the creation is super fucking cool.

As such, Census Designated is a dragon of an album, one entirely confident in its own existence and monstrously brutal. These songs are long, bleeding their way past fiery daggers of chugging guitar and Lovecraftian flesh walls of pure drum noise. There's hopelessness everywhere here. It drips down the skies the tracks build themselves, scouring fields by way of serpentine choruses and malty vocals. You could choose any song and find brilliance in its fields, but Backseat Girl is one of the most potent; immense screams, cryptic lyrics, an overwhelming impression of pain. That pain is key to Census Designated's success.

It's felt in the jagged, disjointed lyrics peppering the landscape most of all. There's almost never a coherent story to be found here, and yet you can always feel it. Sexual assault, neglect, abusive relationships. Loneliness. None of this is spelt out, particularly, and yet it's undeniably there.

There's no start or end to this project. It is sustained purely by its own weight; it's horrifying and depressing, but only because you're never able to understand why. Census Designated's true strength lies in its unknowability. It's unlike any album I've ever heard, and I suspect Jane Remover is going to be looked back on in ten years as both a tastemaker and a stunningly talented musician in her own right. Not only one of my favourite albums this year but an all-timer.

Vortex, 06/08/2024, 18:48: I have never liked an album like this before

A dystopian English seaside town, isolated from the world by a mysterious storm. Tiny "angels" from a civilisation made before time washing up on the shore, their use or intentions unknown. An underground scene hyperlocalised by necessity, with rickety radio stations and forums devoted to fostering the culture that's formed to envelop this new life.

This is the scene Tidal Memory Exo sets itself; Iglooghost producing music in a strange new environment where genres like "Foamtek" and "Tektonicore" spread like wildfire and prehistoric creatures, "Memrees", maul seagulls and poison the sea. From his forum posts on exoportal.xyz, though, it doesn't seem like his music is having much success...

If you couldn't tell already, I'm infatuated with this album and the world it's created. From the moment Blue Hum begins you can just tell you're in for a treat; heavy fuzzed kicks that spray the salty vocals straight into your brain, cracking and fraying like wet sand on concrete. Like Sega Bodega on Dennis, Iglooghost uses his voice as much more of a tool rather than an instrument; he's spoken about how he strings the vocals through several layers of heavy crush and overproduction, and it shows. There's a bite to every vocal inflection that frays against the foamy bass and ugly, crusted sound design. Take Coral Mimic. That track has no one element that rises above the others, but like a wave, you combine it all and it bears down upon you, towering in its immensity. Or Spawn01, with its wet loneliness and ethereal vocals. I have so many memories where I have felt exactly like this music sounds; at a grey beach in my battered, ancient car, being whipped by storm wind and rain, entirely alone and feeling so, so small. That's Tidal Memory Exo; not entirely detached (there's hints of drill in flux.Cocoon and Dew Signal, for example) but so close to it; the euphoria of knowing you are nothing.

If I had to choose just one song to highlight, it'd be Echo Lace; its rusted and corroded hollowness is so fucking intense and powerful, combined with a perfect understanding of how powerful abrasion can be in a track. I've cried to this track, not because it's emotional but because it somehow encapsulates feelings I've had for a long time.

But really you can't listen to just one song from Exo. It works best as a whole, a salty, dystopian whole. Geo Sprite Exo, the closer, is splicing taken to the max; everything halved and pushed together in a thrilling, heady mess of pollution and algae. There's the best use of vocal layering I have ever seen here, too, the kind of blistering perfection that makes your eyes water and your hairs stand on end. Seriously; I'd happily switch this with the #1 album on this list any day of the week.

I have never liked an album like this before. A fucking masterpiece even without its lore, the kind of world that makes you ache to extend its world in your mind, if not in writing. Iglooghost deserves everything and more.

I mean, it's BRAT. Of course it's going to be top of this list.

It's been so rewarding to see Charli turn into a genuine megastar propelled solely by a single body of work. You very rarely get monocultural moments anymore but BRAT was exactly that; I've made so many friends just from people recognising that shade of green in my car or on my wall (the CD collection is slowly growing!).

There's so much quality in this tracklist. 360 sounds like the pop track Charli spent much of her career striving for; effortlessly cool, catchy and quick, with bewildering lines like "I'm everywhere, I'm so Julia" sticking in the mind all too easily. If you get it, you get it. If you don't? Well, Charli doesn't fucking care what you think.

There's a sense that Brat was already Charli's victory lap, even before its mindblowing success; after years of trying (trying to push the avant-garde with records like Pop 2, trying to be the mainstream pop star with CRASH, trying to be everything to everyone), the moment Charli made the record that sounded she didn't have to try was the moment she reached her full potential. You can hear it in tracks like Von Dutch; amidst throbbing synths and harsh, bassy kicks, Charli cements her confidence with a shrug: "It's okay to just admit that you're jealous of me".

Charli heavily pushed Brat as a club album prior to its release, which isn't exactly inaccurate! But I'd argue it hews much closer to a narration of the club experience. In I might say something stupid, Charli describes her feelings of loneliness and awkwardness outside a party: "Let in but still outside/I look perfect for the background, I get nervous, sip the wine". She's "famous, but not quite", snagging her tights on the lawnchair as she mingles with celebrities much more famous than her, at the time. Sympathy is a knife tastes much more like a Charli track of yore, and yet even then Brat's writing shines through as unique, describing jealousy and embarrassment directed towards a certain someone who dated another certain someone. "Don't want to see her backstage at my boyfriend's show/Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick"...Hm. She's lucky not to have drawn the Swifties' ire for that one, but that's what makes Brat so special; not everyone is going to make a song about envying Taylor Swift so much that they want to kill themselves! Another standout, Girl, so confusing, is the best example of this. It's about Lorde, who's always been compared (and confused with) Charli. They've got the same hair, people say they're alike, and yet Charli paints a confusing and conflicted picture of their relationship; does Lorde hate her? Does she want to be her? Maybe they'll make up one day, who knows! What's important is that Charli goes there, narrating her place within the music industry with searing honesty and frankness. The whole album is a trojan horse in that way, cloaking genuine vulnerability in a veneer of pre-emptive self deprecation. Charli's so desperate for this guy that she almost follows him into the bathroom at an awards show! Charli fucking hates award shows and is going to bomb the Grammys! Charli thinks anorexia and smoking is such a vibe, but also she can't eat at a restaurant without thinking about her weight. Charli might sacrifice her career to settle down and have kids, but actually she might just snort cocaine and get soooo fucking wasted in the club for three days straight. These paradoxes sustain Brat perfectly; the tension is balanced in such a way that both things are believable, because that's life. It's the strongest writing I've seen in an album this year; simple, brutal, confrontational, and painfully beautiful.

It helps that it all sounds so good, too; longtime collaborator A.G Cook has essentially found his sound, but here it's sanded down into something resembling perfect machinery. Synths are metallic and grating, vocals treated with a generous helping of autotune and pitch-shifting, with acidic breaks in tracks like Rewind and 365. So I strips that production to the very bone, a beautiful track about the late SOPHIE. Atmospheric, wide, and completely lacking in autotune; this song does not fit Brat, and yet it makes it so much better. Rest in peace, SOPHIE.

Of course, there are some club tracks in here. Club classics and B2b are stellar, with the latter being a crunchy, warped banger that was made for playing on repeat. These tracks show the raw talent Charli and her team have carved themselves after years of honing their talent; mixed perfectly and sampled beautifully, they show that if she had really wanted to, she could've gone all the way club. You even see it in Everything is romantic; not strictly club, but so brutally infused with club DNA (SOPHIE's DNA, to be specific) that you taste it in every word that Charli trades over coldly beautiful instrumentation. Kicks laced with a Damascus sheen, warm and lonely sunsets, boiling tarmac, rushing water; this is one of the best tracks she's ever made, and it really makes me want to go to Italy. Mission accomplished, I guess.

Gotta mention I think about it all the time, too; not much to say other than it's the one song I've cried to on here. "We had a conversation on the way home, should I stop my birth control?/Cos my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all."

Charli ends on a high in more than one way. 365 is a contender for best track of the year, giving the 360 beat crack and a lot of red wine and a couple existential crises for good measure. "Dial 999, it's a good time!" She's having a little key, doing a little line, stumbling through corridors and throwing up in bathrooms. It's a good time but also she might fucking die, which sums Brat up, really.

I love this album. A lot. It's a marker of one of the best summers I've ever had, one that was primarily soundtracked to these beats. It also helps that it's just really fucking good; messy, dirty, sex and wine-fuelled, yet unapologetically tender and emotional. It doesn't get much better than this, and I suspect it won't for many years after 2024. Well done, Charli.