Charli XCX Crash

Asylum, out Friday

★★★★★

Crash’s eye-catching artwork features Charli XCX minimally clad atop a car bonnet, inspired by David Cronenberg’s 1996 movie of the same name. It will get your attention – not that the Cambridge singer is ever far from the collective pop mind. Crash is her third album in 18 months – 10 months after her deservedly acclaimed lockdown album, How I’m Feeling Now. Here, her old pals Christine And

The Queens and Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek help out on the Haim-ish New Shapes.

‘I always let the good ones go’ she sings on Good Ones. I’ll wager you’ve never been to a funeral like the one in the video for that one. There is an Eighties, Janet Jackson-like sheen to Baby but perhaps the best is Beg For You with the impressive Japanese singer Rina Sawayama. However, it is a close-run thing on an album of virtually flawless hyperpop.