"Fancy" associations aside, the sharp-toothed pop skills of Charli XCX are criminally underrated. At once the foremost torchbearer of an era-specific slice of biting radio pop and the respectable ambassador for a new breed of Ramones-nodding simplicity by way of her extremely good 2014 album Sucker, Charli XCX is no stranger to the benefits of embracing humanizing contradictions at every turn.
Part of this contradiction is her gift of slyly infiltrating the seemingly disparate world of punk with her honed snarl, without ever really leaving the pop lexicon. In fact, Charli XCX famously spent quite a bit of time in Sweden crafting what was to be her follow-up to True Romance — a decidedly raw collection of punk-centered frustrations surrounding that album's reception. Speaking with Stereogum during the album's inception, Charli seemed determined to let the album make a statement all its own:
The untitled album was swiftly scrapped (or perhaps just temporarily shelved) in favor of the consciously lighter Sucker. However, the project seems to have recently regained traction — as Charli XCX performed a previously unheard track from those sessions (see above) entitled "Mow That Lawn" during her set at this weekend's IlosaarirockFestival in Finland. If the bass is a bit too booming for your headphones in the clip above, try the slightly cleaner audio-only stream below: