Label: Because Music
Released: 9th June 2023
Christine and the Queens’ fourth album ‘Paranoïa, Angels, True Love’ is the culmination of Chris’ desire to push the boundaries of what pop can do while exploring his deepest emotions through both transcendent highs and heartbreaking lows on a record that returns them to more overt pop music, in his own distinct style, following on from last year’s resolutely oblique ‘Redcar les adorables étoiles’.
This is pop rich in scale and emotional depth. Over the course of 20 tracks and 90 minutes, you can’t help but give yourself to its immersive world. It’s rarely forceful or bludgeoning, though, instead largely focusing on soft, meditative, sensual sounds or grand, cavernous epics like ‘We Have To Be Friends’. Everything here is delicately realised from the use of Madonna in spoken word form to add gravitas to the two tracks featuring 070 Shake in the middle that provide a woozy pop bounce to the hip-hop adjacent and future-facing productions of Mike Dean.
There are so many captivating sounds that unfurl and gently spool out. The BPM count is largely low, but you’re not coming here for bangers; you’re coming to be spiritually uplifted or to reckon with heartbreak. Grief is central to the album. The record comes following the death of Chris’ mother in 2019, and its huge, overpowering weight bears heavy over the album. You sense he has put every single fibre of his being into this collection. It can be a difficult listen at times, but that’s the point, and it stands as Christine and the Queens’ most powerful work.
