![]() ![]() For all the messaging around it, it sometimes feels less like a smart concept than a shrug the work of an artist seeing out a fraught five-album major label deal with a half-hearted “whatever”. Not only does Crash not work – or at least not entirely – it leaves you wondering about its author’s motivations. There’s nothing wrong with applying smart ideas to it, but the end result still has to be sparky and exciting regardless of the intention. Pop music isn’t conceptual art, however much critics with pretensions might want it to be. You can bang on about high concepts and process until you’re blue in the face but it doesn’t make the actual music any more interesting. Listening to the AutoTune-heavy Constant Repeat or featherweight closer Twice, you wonder if there’s anything that separates this from the acres of boilerplate pop already out there. The moments when XCX makes her distinctiveness felt put the weaker moments in even sharper relief. The wan disco-pop of Baby, punctuated by oddly joyless, forced-sounding whoops, can’t compare to her 2014 hit Boom Clap or Icona Pop’s fabulous XCX-penned 2012 single I Love It. At times you can hear the weariness and cynicism creeping in, and these moments undersell XCX’s well-established talents as a writer and performer of straightforward, low-concept hits. Used to Know Me is essentially the influential Stonebridge remix of Robin S’s Show Me Love with a different vocal melody – one that isn’t as good as the one on Show Me Love. Beg for You, which features Rina Sawayama, interpolates September’s 2006 Euro-dance hit Cry for You, which itself recalled Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy. Crash deals in DayGlo choruses and thuddingly obvious interpolations of old hits that ratchet up the knowingness of XCX’s concept. What you might call mixed messaging leaks into the music. She presents Crash as a bravely defiant experiment, kicking against the ongoing love for “authenticity” in pop, but the idea that making ultra-commercial, label-pleasing music is a bold act of rebellion doesn’t stand up to a vast amount ofscrutiny. XCX has often seem torn over whether she aspires to chart success or the pop vanguard. It’s astonishing that an artist signed to a major label since her teens has pulled off a career like this, but it’s also unsurprising that her relationship with the industry has been fractious. ![]() It’s a hairpin turn from her usual way of doing things: the off-piste diversions of her 2017 mixtape Pop 2, on which she scoured the globe for unlikely collaborators in order to imagine a pop world vastly more interesting, eclectic and colourful than the real thing her frequent collaborations with PC Music producers, which propelled the emergence of the manic, extremely online sound of hyperpop. Now, he’s dropped a sensational album, created with long-term mentor, Brian Eno.With Crash – her final album for Atlantic – XCX says she decided to make “a major label album in the way that it’s actually done”, and embrace “everything that the life of a pop figurehead has to offer in today’s world – celebrity, obsession and global hits”. Alongside Headie and Fred, the album hosts features from the likes of Jamie XX, Sampha and FKA Twigs, all affecting the record their own way.ĭespite having already released music with an array of household names, it’s clear that Fred’s journey as an artist has a long and captivating road ahead of it. Last year, the multi-genre spanning producer was able to draw ever-popular rapper Headie One out of his comfort zone with their collaborative project, ‘GANG’. The unique sincerity this adds to the music acts as a reflection on Fred’s outlook on life and approach to friendships. “ If I can live through this next six months/ Day by day/ If I can live through this/ What comes next/ Will be/ Marvellous” The Blessed Madonna promises in the joyous crescendo towards the song’s end.įred’s approach to sampling is like no other, drawing pieces from snapshot moments and recordings on his phone to capture raw moments of thought and emotion from the people in his life. His latest track “Marea”, featuring unscripted dialogue from his good friend, dance-music peer and “rave shaman”, The Blessed Madonna, is a euphoric electro number drenched in an aura of hope and optimism for the music scene at large and boasts an inspiring outlook of the future. His cross-genre collaborative works have a deeply personal touch, and his solo work reads like a journal. A rising talent from London, Fred again… draws upon his reality and expresses it through music. ![]()
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