how i'm feeling now
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CRITIC REVIEWS
100
Across ‘How I’m Feeling Now’ Charli rages with depression, anxiety, uncertainty, love and peace. Full of chaotic energy, it captures lightning in a bottle.
100
The blown-out computerised soundscape of the album lives in perfect sync with the hyper-online way it has been styled, packaged and promoted.
100
It’s a phenomenal achievement of self-expression and the year’s most thrilling release so far, made even more so by lockdown constraints and the self-imposed quick turnaround.
100
At the heart of how i’m feeling now is Charlotte Aitchison’s heart. It uses the very exterior and physical qualities of shiny dance pop to examine interior spaces. And it has clearly been made with love, using all the tools at her disposal in the most creative ways possible.
90
Charli starts and ends with hard disorienting club bangers, leaving the middle of the album space to expose her tenderness and vulnerability while still retaining her futuristic, unpredictable sound and penchant for an irresistible pop hook.
90
Long dismissed as a weird starlet in pop’s ordered constellation, Charli XCX suddenly has the entire world on her wavelength and admirably in this unprecedented chaos she has emerged with her most consistent, rewarding and relatable album. This is undoubtedly next level Charli.
85
While how i’m feeling now is by no means Charli’s most genre-pushing work, nor an indication of the creative potential she has left, it will be remembered as a quintessential 2020 album.
83
Present and post-lockdown, how i’m feeling now will be a definitive album of its time.
80
Despite the crunching production, her knack for a killer pop hook permeates the entire record.
80
For fans of synth-pop, How I’m Feeling Now shows that good work can still be done with remote collaboration and the drive to create.
80
HIFN holds together far better than her “official” label effort.
80
As an album, it is both a time capsule and a chance to escape, the glossy productions making it easy to get lost in beats that ricochet like a pinball, from one dizzying moment to the next.
80
Charli’s self-isolation imbues her fourth album, perhaps inevitably, with the confessional immediacy of bedroom-pop, even as the tracks reach for her signature brand of sonic maximalism. The result is a collection of songs that speaks to our current circumstances without being exclusively tethered to them.
80
how i'm feeling now is, to date, the most effective musical reflection of life during lockdown.
80
Her sixth release for Asylum Records is undeniably her most vulnerable and necessary album to date.
80
A high-voltage assault on the senses – an entrepreneurial experiment that fits her avant-garde spirit.
80
As lockdown creative projects go, a sourdough loaf is beyond most of us, so it’s remarkable that this prolific artist has met her deadline with music that never feels sketched.
80
How I’m Feeling Now is light on guests (purposely so) and polish. It returns to the gleeful disruption of her more ear-bleeding work, while piling on sing-song tunes.
80
It’s that electro album that we’ve all dreamed of making one day, from a girl stuck in a mansion in Los Angeles who desperately misses her friends. The result is immersive, experimental, bubble-gum, intense and deep with stunning layers – and echoes the lockdown zeitgeist.
80
Though it lacks the alien opalescence of Charli's best record, how i'm feeling now contains a different sort of thrilling delirium. It's fun and sometimes silly, made on the fly and under a tight deadline.
80
Wholly a spontaneous offering, entirely DIY in production, and made from the creative confines of whatever was available to the singer in self-isolation; Charli XCX has proved that music really can be made anywhere, with anything, during a period where the world is on pause, and still sounds like the future is hers to play with.
80
While it may not be the proper sequel to the ambitious Charli, how i'm feeling now's rawness and immediacy give it an appeal all its own. More than just an interesting social media experiment or a way to fend off quarantine boredom, it's an artistic challenge that's true to the very best parts of XCX's music.
80
It’s the lockdown soundtrack we all need.
80
On Charli XCX’s self-described quarantine album how i’m feeling now, her field of view has never been more vast.
77
The British electro pop artist sings of love, loneliness, and solo partying across an album built in and made for this very moment.
70
Charli XCX uses her isolation as inspiration for a brand new record conceived during the pandemic. How I'm Feeling Now captures the frustrations and pleasures of confinement with a feisty attitude.
60
From where we currently sit, it’s another intriguing entry into the Charli XCX canon, even if it does feel like more of a stopgap than anything.
60
The shrieking and snarling rave synths are rendered in the ultra high resolution of cutting edge club styles, lasers zapping through space which is itself folded and twisted as Charli's voice veers between ultra-present and pixellated dissipation. It's very “now” and very good.
Cover art makes me wanna sex.
But asides, I think everyone here is at this point aware that this is one of the most anticipated albums of the year. Charli, still fresh off the massive success that is Charli, decides to make a "quarantine LP" with the few producers that got locked in with her at her place.
If you haven't heard Charli, it's an incredible pop album, that succeeded to cross the bridge between mainstream pop recipes and experimental detours, most notably from the PC ... read more
Welp I know what I’m covering Friday
Edit: I enjoy this, this is a fun project. There are a good handful of tracks on here that feel tasteful, especially the songs produced by Dylan Brady. Overall though, this doesn't match the quality of the album Charli XCX dropped last year "Charli."
That project felt catchier, more immediate, more emotional, and more focused. It had tons of material, but all of it felt necessary. Much of this new album feels like filler. The moments on ... read more
Isolated, Charli offers us a fantastic and particularly energetic new project, which not only displays the inexhaustible talent she has, but also continues her crazy race for innovation.
In the space of 7 months Charli is ravaging the pop world, as if her latest super hit album wasn't enough for her. To our great joy she is not content to enjoy success as most would have done, she is thirsty to go even higher. At the top of PC music and Bubblegum bass, she is "slowly" leaving a ... read more
My prime takeaway from Charli's experimental stuff is that it's hit or miss. Except when it misses I *usually* still see artistic value, and if it's a hit it's usually a huge hit.
Best: anthems
Worst: pink diamond
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Added on: April 6, 2020