This week at a film screening, someone asked Isabelle Huppert how her work relates to other art forms. Music, fashion, literature—does she incorporate her appreciation into her films? She said, “I don’t.” She said, “I could be the same actress without coming out of my bedroom, just by my imagination and thinking.” I think that’s as clear a distinction as you could make between the actor’s job and the pop star’s: representing a version of someone else versus representing a version of themselves.

Charli xcx spells it out in the title of her new album, Music, Fashion, Film, which she’s described as being “about process.” It follows her soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights and, more notably, BRAT, which became the kind of cultural phenomenon that some pop musicians would be tempted to try to outdo immediately. Charli has, wisely, throttled back for a fashionably short new album with a first-draft, “one for me” feeling that resembles the quasi-vérité style of how i’m feeling now. Music, Fashion, Film makes a few pointed rejoinders to BRAT style: Rather than club pop and wounded electronics, Charli and co-producers A.G. Cook and Finn Keane are making “rock music,” with guitars. The mood has shifted, themes of career insecurity and self-doubt replaced with creativity and gratitude for success. One whole song, “Magic Metal Montana,” is dedicated to Cook as a collaborator and friend. It’s sweet.

You’ll need a little familiarity with Charli’s whole deal for this one—by now, you’re supposed to understand that she’s in on the joke. You’ll know this long before you hear her say, “Maybe I fucked your dad/Just kidding I’m only saying that for effect,” on “Wink Wink,” a song that sounds a little like it’s 2005 and I’m listening to some NME also-ran band like the Rakes. The left-footed charm of Music, Fashion, Film is that every readily identifiable flaw or fuckup is dead center and obviously coordinated for effect. When the “rock” consists of pointing in the general direction of either Garbage grunge-pop or a Strokes riff—confirmed, that is rock. If “Yeah” has about 12 words total because the whole song is made of the drop in “Song 2”—like, did you need a bridge and an outro? Clearly not.

This TikTok logic means that if you were to just read the lyrics you’d say this is one of the least written albums of all time. But the record is full of little somatic thrills—doubled vocal harmonies, sharp dynamic contrasts—that come densely packed yet discrete and readily clippable (“Fucking shoot me”). “Yeah” is not only edging you for a whole two minutes but actually warping the timekeeping, slowing down and glitching like bad Bluetooth. “2007” is a jumble of little instrumental and vocal hooks that give the impression someone’s been tossing the stems like toy jacks, trying to grab one more. In “I’m Afraid,” the band turns on the seasick Pixies-style guitars as Charli expels anxieties in a heavy-lidded triplet chant (in press materials she compares this song to Yung Lean). Sometimes she fits in a whole line and then it turns out that “Don’t fucking choke on your ego when you see me coming” can be quite melodic.

There’s risk in showing up seemingly so under-prepared after an unprecedented smash, but Pop 2 fans recognize that Charli is an experienced pop mixtape operator. The rock concept is a fresh context for her work with Cook and Keane that still feels of a piece in its springy momentum, bright yet sour melodies, and the way even the heavy reverb seems to fly through clear air. Music, Fashion, Film’s cool-girl slacker rock walks up to the border where doing less isn’t quite enough anymore and finds some incredible scores, especially the cheeky “Yeah” and the slovenly and gorgeous “SS26,” where Charli muses on pop-star inauthenticity and the apocalypse: “Nothing’s gonna save us, no music, fashion, or film.” In this endless season of international heatwaves, floods, fire, and smoke, I can’t help hearing a song about climate grief. It’s not going to matter what it says on the label.

The last thing about this album is that it’s a crazy memento mori. We’ve been killing rock music for years. Director David Cronenberg’s quote, “They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever,” echoes morbidly through the overflow of the last track, “No One Lasts Forever,” and you can take that at face value: Great art outlives its creators. But on a record so intentionally, imperfectly human, I also hear an acknowledgment of the identity hazard of being the pop star—of leveraging your whole artistic self in your work, keeping nothing separate. It’s the meta theme that Charli’s developed since how i’m feeling now and Crash, and following the BRAT concept film The Moment, Music, Fashion, Film represents her latest trip through pop’s bizarre two-way mirror. In “Camera” she suggests that performing is the only way not to feel like herself (i.e. acting), but of course, we then perceive her as being more Charli. On Music, Fashion, Film, she sounds as destabilized as any of us by the reality of the performance.