Charli XCX - How I'm Feeling Now

There isn’t a better snapshot of living through coronavirus than Charli XCX’s ‘How I’m Feeling Now’. An album made in isolation, it sees the alt-pop icon work virtually with long time collaborators BJ Burton and A.G. Cook as well as take advice from a fanbase going through exactly the same thing. Even isolated, Charli celebrates community and collaboration.

When the project was announced six weeks ago, the world at large seemed to believe this global pandemic would quickly blow over and life would get back to normal overnight. How wrong we all were. Now things like live music and mass gatherings are unlikely to return this side of Christmas, and we have no idea when we’ll be able to hug our parents or meet our mates for a pint. That journey of hope, despair, resignation, rinse and repeat is a cycle we’re all currently locked in. It freewheels through ‘How I’m Feeling Now’, a raging bull of industrial breakdowns, emotional turmoil and small pleasures.

There are roof-raising moments of classic XCX, the aggressive dance of opener of ‘pink diamond’ is an urgent blitz of resilience that goes hard then harder while ‘c2.0’ is a swirling remix of the fiery ‘Charli’ track ‘Click’. ‘Party 4 U’ is a starry-eyed party for two, a spot-lit slow dance while the room melts away and the closing ‘visions’ is a viciously outrageous rave track that holds nothing back. But for the most part ‘How I’m Feeling Now’ takes the vulnerability that started with ‘Charli’ and digs deeper. It’s “Pop 2’s frantic emo younger sister.”