Charli XCX gets her overdue flowers with brat, like Leo getting Best Actor for The Revenant. Unlike that film, this record is so eclipsed by an attendent cultural tsunami that it's genuinely hard to appraise it in a vacuum. That's probably worked to its advantage, occluding questions of the album's long-term strength. How's the mixing? Is the arrangement strong enough? Is it as gorgeous and forward-thinking as past records? Who cares, we just wanna hear those club classics.