Charli XCX review, Wuthering Heights: A spectacular, phantasmagorical fever dream

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

In interviews, the artist born Charlotte Aitchison says she was touring her all-conquering, messy party album BRAT in 2024 when she got a text from Fennell asking if she’d be interested in creating a soundtrack (she’d already composed original music for Emma Seligman’s 2023 dark comedy Bottoms). Exhausted from performing BRAT’s erratic hyperpop, she found herself moving in the “opposite" direction with Wuthering Heights. Working with Finn Keane (who also co-produced BRAT) Aitchison 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.

Aitchison scored a coup by coaxing former Velvet, John Cale, to appear on the tremendous single “House”. Like Nellie Dean, the elderly housekeeper who unreliably narrates most of Emily Brontë’s novel, the 82-year-old Cale’s weathered vocal adds a sense of deeper time (Brontë was always reaching back – her mid-19th century novel was set in 1700), along with a reminder that passion and creativity doesn’t necessarily fade with age. Over the ragged, repeated snag of a violin bow, Cale speaks with haunting formality: “Can 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'm a prisoner, to live for eternity…” Towards the close, Aitchison balances his measured tone with a long, corrosive howl.

That howl echoes through the album, even as Aitchinson switches to a low, guttural mutter on songs such as “Wall of Sound”. Here, she invokes "unbelievable tension... unbelievable pressure" that builds over loops of thwarted yearning; it escalates to a clubbable pace on “Dying for You” with its breathless revelations, “All the pain and torture that I went through all makes sense to me now/ I was dying for you.” The wild beauty of the misty moors gleams through “Always Everywhere” with a melody that scales the hills, while “Seeing Things” deals in madness and visions over punchy, sawing violins. The spectacular “Chains of Love” writhes around in the anguish of obsessive love: “I'd rather lay down in thorns/ I'd rather drown in a stream/ I'd rather light myself on fire/ I'd rather wear all these scars/ I'd rather watch my skin bleed…”

The whole thing is a phantasmagorical fever dream that relishes its weird and experimental noises without sacrificing cool hooks or accessible language. Aitchison proves herself much more in tune with the terrible complexity of Brontë's original vision than Fennell: there are no inverted commas around the emotion expressed on this record. A windswept, gothic triumph.