Charli XCX - How I'm Feeling Now (LP) - Orange Neon Translucent Vinyl

In April 2020, cabin fever met creative spark and Charli XCX threw herself into a six‑week challenge to make an album from scratch while stuck at home in Los Angeles. She set a hard deadline of 15 May 2020 and hit it, releasing how i’m feeling now as a tightly wound, 11‑track burst that documented isolation without losing the thrill of the club. It was a genuinely collaborative project too, with Charli sharing demos on Instagram Live and Zoom, releasing stems for fans to remix, and inviting people to send in clips for videos. The credits feature her long‑time ally A. G. Cook, plus Dylan Brady of 100 gecs and BJ Burton, the latter known for his work with Bon Iver and Low. You can hear the hands on deck, but the voice and vision are unmistakably hers.

The album opens with Pink Diamond, all serrated synths and clipped vocals, announcing the mood in under two minutes. Forever follows as the tender heart of the record, a lovesick rave memory that swells like a message scribbled in a diary then blasted through a warehouse PA. Charli shared its stems early and fans flooded the internet with mixes, which felt right, since the official video stitched together home‑shot footage from around the world. Claws arrives like a sugar rush, its hyperpop bounce sharpened by Brady’s taste for fizzy, mutant textures. Then I Finally Understand slides into a lean, UK‑leaning club pulse that puts the focus on her voice and the tangled feelings under it.

What makes how i’m feeling now stick is the balance between glitchy maximalism and direct, sometimes painfully simple sentiment. Seven years is the relationship check‑in no one expected to hit so hard, a plainspoken look at time spent and time ahead that landed differently in lockdown. C2.0 reimagines Click from her 2019 album Charli, swapping braggadocio for longing as she sings about missing her friends and the lives they’d built on the road. Party 4 U, a fan favourite from live sets for years, finally gets an official release here, and it still feels like a secret whispered in a crowded room. By the time Anthems crashes in, the mood shifts from introspection to pent‑up energy, the sound of a weekend that never quite arrives. Visions closes with a chaotic, euphoric run that piles on ideas until everything spills over, like a live set fading into the morning.

The production story is part of the appeal. Charli recorded vocals at home, workshopped ideas with A. G. Cook over video calls, and kept up a steady stream of updates as tracks took shape. That transparency could have come off as a gimmick, but the songs hold up without the context. There’s a tactile quality to BJ Burton’s grit, a playful pop instinct in Cook’s edits, and a cartoonish gleam to Brady’s beats, yet it all clicks into a sleek 37‑minute ride that never drags. Lockdown albums were everywhere in 2020, but this one caught a particular mood: anxious, affectionate, short on sleep, still chasing the drop.

Critics heard it too. Pitchfork tagged it Best New Music, and it made a stack of year‑end lists, with many calling it a defining pop release of that strange winter‑into‑spring. It felt like a culmination of the world Charli has been building with PC Music and her collaborators for the past decade, but it also felt immediate, like she was writing in wet cement while the rest of us watched.

If you’re crate digging, the How I’m Feeling Now vinyl is worth snapping up, both as a time capsule and because these tracks hit beautifully on a turntable. The high‑end sizzle on Pink Diamond, the low‑end throb of Forever, the sugar‑glass edges of Claws, they all light up a room. Charli XCX vinyl tends to vanish fast, so if you see it at a Melbourne record store, don’t sleep. And if you prefer to buy Charli XCX records online, keep an eye on reputable shops that specialise in vinyl records Australia wide. It pairs nicely with other Charli XCX albums on vinyl too, especially Charli for the contrast, but this one stands on its own as a rare pop document that captures a moment and still bangs long after the moment passed.