How Charli XCX's new album going to work in a live setting? Charli released the excellent Music, Fashion, Film last week, and it marks an intentional step back from the anthemic force of the whole Brat situation. Her new tracks are inward-looking and idiosyncratic, but they're going to have to fill up big venues. Charli will play a headlining set at Lollapalooza on Friday, and then she'll head off on an arena tour with Underscores. It'll be fun to see how it all plays out. Last night, Charli gave a bit of a preview when she played a bunch of those new songs live for the first time.
On Wednesday night, Charli XCX played a Spotify event at the Basement East in Nashville, and the setlist had a heaping selection of Music, Fashion, Film tracks. She debuted some of those songs at a one-off Brooklyn show earlier this month, but the Nashville set included five that Charli had never performed before: "Yeah," "Magic Metal Montana," "Card Declined," "2007," and "No One Lasts Forever." Sadly, David Cronenberg did not appear to do his spoken-word part on "No One Lasts Forever" — or, if he did, then the video cut off before he arrived. Seems unlikely.
Charli has a live band for the Nashville show, and at least from what I can tell in the videos, the new songs totally worked in that setting. Charli is so fond of vocal filters and studio tricks that it can be easy to overlook how good her songs are under all of that. Given this relatively minimal presentation, those songs shone through. The constant strobe lights and Charli's larger-than-life presence did a lot to sell them, too. Below, check out a bunch of videos and last night's setlist.
SETLIST:
01 "Playboy Bunny"
02 "Yeah" (live debut)
03 "Apple"
04 "Wink Wink"
05 "Magic Metal Montana" (live debut)
06 "Card Declined" (live debut)
07 "2007" (live debut)
08 "Camera"
09 "party 4 u"
10 "anthems"
11 "pink diamond"
12 "If You Take Away the Music Then What Has She Got?"
13 "SS26"
14 "No One Lasts Forever" (live debut)
15 "Rock Music"
