There is life after Brat, as Charli xcx proves with her second soundtrack, this time for the blockbuster Wuthering Heights. Without any pressure, this album allows the artist to calmly experiment with new sounds while returning to others closer to her first album, True Romance.
The first single, House, a gloomy collaboration with former The Velvet Underground member John Cale, opens the album. The release proved, once again, why new fans should not expect a new Brat from a songwriter who has done everything from punk pop to J-pop. Mostly spoken word, the song breaks at the end with screams that rival Lingua Ignota and electronic distortion that make it one of the best tracks on the soundtrack.
Next, the 1-2-3 punch continues with the calm of the majestic Wall of Sound (with echoes of B2b), which provides a single moment of tension in the final seconds before giving way to the pure pop of the ultra-catchy Dying for You. The cinematic Always Everywhere is the perfect choice for Emerald Fennell’s film credits with its expansive chorus, whose formula is repeated in the more conventional Chains of Love. Seeing Things is vaguely reminiscent of Taylor Swift’s melodies and would certainly not sound out of place in Folklore.
I’ll leave some space to talk about one of the best tracks on the album, Altars, a sober production in the verses that explodes (a little) thanks to a restrained but completely effective chorus. Simply one of the best mid-tempo tracks in Charli’s discography. There’s a slight sense of disappointment by the next song, Eyes of the World, not because it’s bad, but because we expected more from her second collaboration with the elusive artist, Sky Ferreira. Although maybe we should be happy that she’s released another song after Leash.
The album ends with the atmospheric and, at times, aggressive Funny Mouth, which works well both as a closing track and in its corresponding scene. The soundtrack is an exercise in experimentation for the artist, to which she is lyrically attached above all. For long-time fans of the British artist, Wuthering Heights is a great body of work that sees her return to her earliest sound but incorporating everything she’s learned over the years and her expansive, ever-changing career. Charli reminds us again that she’s an incredible lyricist and producer, that she knows what she wants to sound and look like, and the worlds she’d like to inhabit and explore through music and art.
