{"id":472777,"date":"2026-02-13T17:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472777\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T17:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:09:11","slug":"charli-xcx-review-wuthering-heights-a-spectacular-phantasmagorical-fever-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472777\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli xcx review, Wuthering Heights \u2013 A spectacular, phantasmagorical fever dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cPut my flesh upon the cross until I scream,\u201d intones a dry-throated Charli xcx<\/a> on Wuthering Heights<\/a>. Her atmospheric soundtrack to Emerald Fennell\u2019s new film<\/a> leans hard, at times, into the script\u2019s BDSM vibe. But while the big, lavish gloss of Fennell\u2019s visual narrative slip-slides (often comically) around on the surface of the story, the grimy friction of Charli\u2019s music claws its way back through the centuries to disinter Cathy and Heathcliff\u2019s dark, damaged hearts<\/a>. This is a record that conjures history in its use of violin, cello and double bass, but drags the strings\u2019 horsehair romance violently into modernity over cold, muddy beds of industrial electronica.<\/p>\n

In interviews, the artist born Charlotte Aitchison says she was touring her all-conquering, messy party album Brat <\/a>in 2024 when she got a text from Fennell asking if she\u2019d be interested in creating a soundtrack (she\u2019d already composed original music for Emma Seligman\u2019s 2023 dark comedy Bottoms). Exhausted from performing Brat\u2019s erratic hyperpop, she found herself moving in the \u201copposite\u201d direction with Wuthering Heights. Working with Finn Keane (who also co-produced Brat) Charli luxuriates in dreamier sonic territory, swapping the garish neons of her last album for gritty, pixelated shades of grey. There are nods to the layered grind of Nineties bands such as Nine Inch Nails and the aching, Sixties drawl-drone of The Velvet Underground.<\/p>\n

Charli scored a coup by coaxing former Velvet, John Cale<\/a>, to appear on the tremendous single \u201cHouse\u201d<\/a>. Like Nellie Dean, the elderly housekeeper who unreliably narrates most of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel, the 82-year-old Cale\u2019s weathered vocal adds a sense of deeper time (Bront\u00eb was always reaching back \u2013 her mid-19th century novel was set in the late 18th century), along with a reminder that passion and creativity doesn\u2019t necessarily fade with age. Over the ragged, repeated snag of a violin bow, Cale speaks with haunting formality: \u201cCan I speak to you privately for a moment?\/ I just want to explain\/ Explain the circumstances I find myself in\/ What and who I really am\/ I\u2019m a prisoner, to live for eternity\u2026\u201d Towards the close, Charli balances his measured tone with a long, corrosive howl. <\/p>\n

\"It\u2019sIt\u2019s me, I\u2019m Charli: The \u2018Brat\u2019 artist conjures gothic drama on her \u2018Wuthering Heights\u2019 soundtrack (Paul Kooiker)<\/p>\n

That howl echoes through the album, even as Charli switches to a low, guttural mutter on songs such as \u201cWall of Sound\u201d. Here, she invokes \u201cunbelievable tension… unbelievable pressure\u201d that builds over loops of thwarted yearning; it escalates to a clubbable pace on \u201cDying for You\u201d with its breathless revelations, \u201cAll the pain and torture that I went through all makes sense to me now\/ I was dying for you.\u201d The wild beauty of the misty moors gleams through \u201cAlways Everywhere\u201d with a melody that scales the hills, while \u201cSeeing Things\u201d deals in madness and visions over punchy, sawing violins. The spectacular \u201cChains of Love\u201d writhes around in the anguish of obsessive love: \u201cI\u2019d rather lay down in thorns\/ I\u2019d rather drown in a stream\/ I\u2019d rather light myself on fire\/ I\u2019d rather wear all these scars\/ I\u2019d rather watch my skin bleed\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The whole thing is a phantasmagorical fever dream that relishes its weird and experimental noises without sacrificing cool hooks or accessible language. Charli proves herself much more in tune with the terrible complexity of Bront\u00eb\u2019s original vision than Fennell: there are no inverted commas around the emotion expressed on this record. A windswept, gothic triumph. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-472777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}