Music review: Charli XCX’s ‘Brat’ oscillates between hedonism and anxiety, cult classic and party pop

English pop singer and songwriter Charli XCX The singer’s sixth album, “Brat,” oscillates between hedonism and anxiety — the euphoria of a night on the dance floor and the growing restlessness of the next morning — as much as her in-between status as an underground pop queen and sometimes a story mainstream success.

The latter has already arrived a few times in his career, as in his contribution to the Soundtrack to the box office hit “Barbie”, her feature on Iggy Azalea’s once-inescapable “Fancy,” and the same for Icona Pop’s 2012 hit “I Love It,” which she also co-wrote. Something started to change in 2016, around her “Vroom Vroom” EP, when Charli future tourmate Troye Sivan – and began collaborating with the hyperpop collective PC Music, in search of a future, including the late and innovative Sophie (the theme of the thoughtful tribute “Then I” ) and AG Cook, executive producer of “Brat”.

This album builds on their previous work, of course, with its bold, bombastic synth-pop – but returns to their UK rave roots. Recent single “360” is the intersection of both, an ode to the It-girl outsiders of the internet – a quality mirrored in the paparazzi-pop and Y2K bravado of “Von Dutch” and the hyper-referentiality of “Club Classics”. There, she rattles off a canon of cool musicians she’d like to dance with: Sophie, Cook, DJ Hudson Mohawke and her fiancé George Daniel of English pop-rock band The 1975.”

“Everything is Romantic” opens with beautiful strings and horns as Charli XCX sings about falling in love before the song veers into UK garage. It’s a peculiarly luxurious combination, a one-song case for subwoofers that achieves the same kind of emotional ascendancy associated with orchestral music.

But interwoven into addictive songs about pleasure-seeking and status is also a kind of insecurity: “Rewind” is a club banger about bad body image, not feeling successful enough, worrying about things like chart position. ( “Boom Applause” fans may want to start here, but prepare for a particularly confessional Charli.) “Apple” considers a family legacy; “Girl, So Confusing” provokes a rivalry with another pop artist.

It’s all effortlessly danceable, both in moments of metaphysical frustration and chemical euphoria.

But the tension at the heart of “Brat” is best illustrated in the final two tracks, arguably the most beautiful and moving of the 15-song collection. In the penultimate “I Think About It All the Time”, after 13 songs with pulsating rhythms that address love, loss, life and career, she leaves the club to consider motherhood.

Would having a child give you a new sense of purpose? Would she become a different person?

“And a baby could be mine / ‘Cause maybe one day I could / If I don’t run out of time / Would it make me lose all my freedom?” she sings, her phrasing turning into a sweet hum. Do I stop my birth control?/Because my career seems so small/In the existential scheme of it all.”

Spoiler alert: She doesn’t have the answers, at least not right now. Closer “365” returns to the light-hearted production of opener “360” before turning into something much more difficult. And then there she is, back on the dance floor, drink in hand, swaying in the haze of an overactive smoke machine.

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