Album Review: Charli XCX Feels It All on ‘How I’m Feeling Now’

The pop futurist makes an album for the present with piercing depictions of intimacy and isolation.

Written by Annie Lyons

Charli XCX makes pop music for the future. In a time where critics and fans alike constantly wonder about the future of the genre and who might be its savior, she’s garnered a reputation as a forward-thinking visionary just outside the mainstream. With a repertoire of glitter-soaked cybernetic club bangers and the 2 a.m. moments of despair that follow them, Charli's music has always made the future feel like it's already arrived, and that hasn't stopped in our present apocalyptic moment.

Before its release on May 15, her fourth record how i’m feeling now had already achieved a certain mythology through circumstances alone: the first album from a well-known artist entirely produced during quarantine. Within just one week of social distancing at home, the self-proclaimed workaholic resolved to diary her experience with a new album to be completed by a self-imposed and wildly ambitious six week deadline.

There’s valid concern about “quarantine art.” No one wants to hear a pop star sing overblown sentiments about how We all need to come together! when celebrities are better equipped than their listeners to make it through the coronavirus pandemic unscathed. But how i’m feeling now avoids these cliches. It’s still undeniably a work made for the times — a feverish concoction that’s part boredom, part yearning, and part oblivion. Some lyrics hold more bite than they might've had three months ago (See: “Every single night kinda feels the same” in opener “pink diamond”). While Charli’s expressions of distance and desire take on new meaning given their context, they’re based on real feelings that are personal to her experience. She’s not trying to speak for everyone, just herself, and that’s why the record works so well.

how i’m feeling now walks an agonizing line between isolation and intimacy. Much of the record draws from time spent with longtime boyfriend Huck Kwong. According to Charli, the couple was in a long distance relationship that was reaching a breaking point before they began quarantining together and reconnected. As a result, the album reflects a certain duality, with songs that alternately examine a relationship fraying at its edges and revel in feelings of closeness.

In “enemy,” sharp synths accentuate her self-doubt as she considers her boyfriend’s potential to hurt her if they ever broke up. Playing on the adage “keep your friends close but your enemies closer,” Charli wonders who’s closer to her than her lover as she sings, “Maybe you're my enemy / You're the only one who knows the way I really feel.” At the bridge, a voice memo recorded after a recent therapy session cuts in. Charli’s voice is jagged and husky compared to her previously glossy, autotuned vocals as she says, “I don't fully really understand it yet / It hurts here, it like hurts here.” It’s a moment of rawness that gives the song some weight, grounding the hypothetical nightmare with real anxieties.

Charli mentions her therapist again in “i finally understand,” a sprightly ode to Kwong that represents the couple reigniting their relationship. The track works in tandem with “forever” and “7 years,” which similarly ruminate on the enduring longevity and trust that she’s found in her relationship despite the rough patches. “forever” is a triumphant highlight. Whooshing electronic waves and a rapidly ticking beat build layers of distortion, but when the excess sounds wash away during the first chorus, Charli’s voice rings clearly as she sings, “I will always love you / I'll love you forever / Even when we're not together.” The bittersweet flavor of the lyrics only adds to the track’s tenderness; even as she considers that the relationship may have an expiration date, Charli finds assurance in her love.

Produced by 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady, the bubblegum rave of “claws” feels like a sour candy headrush with Charli deliriously chanting, “I like, I like, I like, I like, I like everything about you.” (We’re eagerly awaiting a remix with Carly Rae Jepsen.) She slips sexual innuendo into what sounds like a laundry list of XCX-approved catchphrases: “Slip and slide up my thighs / Juicy just like clementines / Sorry if I make you cry / Party time, hop inside / We're so high, roller coaster ride.” After the second chorus though, the track veers into new territory with convulsing beats accelerating at breakneck speed before erupting into glitchy euphoria. There’s a purposefully unpolished quality to the song that’s found throughout the album, but the messiness is freeing, adding to the immediacy of Charli’s joy.

Perhaps paradoxically, “detonate” takes the opposite approach. Over delicate and bubbly synths, Charli reflects on her anxieties within her relationship, worrying that she’ll soon self-destruct. The song’s plainly spoken truths are brutal in their honesty: “I don't trust myself at all / Why should you trust me?” The outro kicks things up a notch, adding in heavier percussion that gradually obscures the stuttering vocals as she questions over and over: “Why should you love me?” In the song’s final moments, a beeping countdown begins, but the expected explosion never comes. Instead, everything abruptly cuts off, leaving only simmering feedback.

“c2.0” is a heartfelt song about missing the friends she used to party with before quarantine; dancing together has been replaced with “phone calls every night.” It’s a rework of the similarly friendship-themed “Click” off Charli, a swaggering Brady-produced track about the creative prowess of the singer and her collaborator pals. “c2.0” kicks off with a heavily autotuned sample of Kim Petras’ vocals from the original, singing “I'm next level, so legit with all my clique, clique, clique” on loop until the song dissolves into a malfunctioning chant of just the titular word. By the 96th repetition of “clique,” the sensory overload is numbing. When Charli finally breaks through the monotony with a verse vocalizing her loneliness, it feels like a release, a way to make it through.

Similarly, “party 4 u” reimagines an unreleased track that first surfaced in a 2017 live set. Polished off with new lyrics, it’s an album standout that perfectly encapsulates a deep and frustrated yearning for that one special person on the invite list who didn’t show. After a slow build-up, Charli bursts in with a renewed urgency on the second verse, sing-shouting over bouncy, warped drums and twinkling synths, and lines like “Why you treating me like someone that you never loved?” succeed at cutting deep. The song builds up into a trancelike recitation of “party on you” that’s visceral and full of longing, before transitioning to an emotional outro with distant crowds cheering. It could’ve been a fitting end to the album, which Charli apparently debated — an imagined rave, lonely yet comforting.

Instead, the album finishes with the unknown. “I got pictures in my mind / I can see it so clearly, see it all so bright,” the artist sings over racing synths in “visions.” But while Charli’s vision for the future feels hopeful, she never fully articulates what she sees. The song enters an alien dimension when her vocals disappear completely, the beat taking on a new fervency before catapulting into relentless, starry oblivion.

Uncertainty is written into how i’m feeling now’s code, but Charli grounds it with what she knows. In many ways, the album feels like her two most recent works, Pop 2 and Charli, hunkered down together for quarantine and waited to see what came out of it. how i’m feeling now sees Charli continue in the most promising directions from each, combining the former’s femmebot sound with the latter’s introspection and vulnerability. To think that it was all done in six weeks.

REVIEWSAfterglow ATXMay 22, 2020charli xcx, annie lyons