At 12:35 p.m. Metro-North to Beacon was the craziest train I've ever seen in my life. It was filled with twentysomethings in fishnets and flashy jewelry, dyed neon hair and hot pink tracksuits, crop tops and tall dark boots. Chartreuse-green everything. A group of friends talked about their plans to go to an FKA branches themed rave night. Others compared Brooklyn's best bars for hinged dates. “Do we know if Caroline Calloway is still alive?” asked someone in the row behind me, sounding genuinely concerned.
Journalists and label heads, TikTokers and art park enthusiasts, the unemployed—we were all here Thursday afternoon to visit the Storm King Art Center, an outdoor sculpture museum in New York's Hudson Valley. The event: a last-minute performance by Charli XCX. She was about to unveil her new remix album BRATwhich is loaded with friends and other weirdos from Ariana Grande to Bon Iver to Bb trickz to Bladee. BRAT ranks among the blockbuster albums of the year: raved about by critics, played at probably every coffee shop and party for months on end, turned into a political rally for Kamala Harris' campaign. We should be sick of it by now, but it's hard to resist when Charli keeps dropping stacked remixes and cheeky tricks like this Storm King one-off.
After arriving at Beacon, the buses took us to the edge of the park. Walking in large clumps through a winding path of fall foliage, it felt like we were on a school trip. The center of Storm King was like one of those Christmas village sets, except themed after BRAT: chartreuse-green cocktails, soda stands with “Vitamin Water is BRAT” signs, and a two-sided wooden wall structure that looked like a giant version of a green folder you'd use in middle school science class. Each was mentioned BRAT the song along with the remix features and was so tall it seemed to dwarf Alice Aycock's 29-foot whirlwind Triple event sculpture nearby.
When a dark truck pulled up and Charli got out, the 400 or so people were crowding the hillside around the BRAT the structure went crazy. There was no real stage or much setup beyond the speakers, so she stood inside the structure, changing tracks from her phone as if we were all jammed listening to a friend control the auxes at a house party. “How sick is that?” she beamed, wearing a fur coat and jeans. “We're fine art dogs now.” Before he started, he took a moment to talk about how the remix album leaked with some classic Charli cheek: “I know nobody here heard the leak. So if you're singing the words, I'll know!” Everyone cheered and she hit the play. With the Storm King event in mind, here are five suggestions from Charli XCX Brat and it's totally different but still brat.
