True Romance
Britain\'s Charli XCX can be regarded as the power behind Icona Pop\'s fantastic girl-power anthem \"I Love It\" (she cowrote it with two producers). And that song\'s considerable muscle and sass easily set it apart from music by scores of other female pop artists. While the 20-year-old professes a love for classic Spice Girls and Britney (and, we suspect, Madonna), she\'s nurtured a slightly edgier vision that puts her more in the camp of artists like Marina & The Diamonds. Synths, drums, more synths, pounding dance floor beats, and a husky voice capable of both withering heat and alluring warmth turn what could be humdrum dance pop tunes (like \"Take My Hand\" and \"Black Roses\") into something bigger that rattles more than your ankle bones. The sultry, winsome \"Nuclear Seasons\" rings with the memories of Talk Talk\'s \"It\'s My Life\" and murkier memories of Duran Duran, while the snarl of \"You (Ha Ha Ha)\" hints at the power of \"I Love It,\" though it sparkles and pinwheels on a sweeter bed of synth notes. Watching Charli XCX stretch out into new pop spaces is guaranteed to be a fun ride.
After some big early singles and some unsteady mixtapes, Charlotte Aitchison’s debut album delievers on that initial promise. True Romance is an album of emotionally direct, bubblegum-catchy, off-kilter songs about falling in and out of love.
The debut from the future queen of electro-pop is less an album and more of a highly cultivated showcase and a well-crafted retrospective.
In the couple of years leading up to her debut album, True Romance, Charli XCX issued a slew of singles, EPs, and mixtapes that mixed moody synth pop with rap and R&B into a sound billed as "neon goth."
That True Romance is likely to ruffle few feathers on its release speaks volumes about the current shape of modern-day pop music.
Charli XCX has spent four years working up to her debut album, and it was worth the wait, writes <strong>Rebecca Nicholson</strong>