Review: Charli XCX and Billie Eilish get flirtatious and bratty on new song

POP/ROCK

Charli XCX featuring Billie Eilish, “Guess”

In the slightly less than two months since its release, Charli XCX’s sixth album, “Brat,” has transformed from a clubby cult classic into a mainstream phenomenon, fueled by a sense of cool so elusive yet galactically powerful that a CNN panel recently convened to discuss, with magnificent awkwardness, its potential impact on the presidential election. Strange times indeed. Luckily, Charli is still keeping it light, not allowing the new patina of Importance to cloud the fact that “Brat Summer” is, above all things, about messy, hedonistic fun. So let’s just say that the latest “Brat”-era remix, the deliriously suggestive “Guess,” is unlikely to appear in an upcoming Kamala Harris campaign ad.

“You wanna guess the color of my underwear,” Charli winks atop an electroclash beat produced by the indie-sleaze revivalist the Dare, who interpolates Daft Punk’s 2005 single “Technologic”; Dylan Brady of 100 gecs also has a writing credit. It’s an underground loft party crashed by a bona fide A-lister: Eilish, making her first guest appearance on another artist’s song, purring a playfully flirtatious verse that ends, “Charli likes boys but she knows I’d hit it.” It’s refreshing to once again hear Eilish on a beat as dark and abrasive as those on her debut album, but she and her brother and collaborator Finneas know they are ultimately on Charli’s turf, reverently endorsing the trashy aesthetic and if-you-know-you-know humor of “Brat.” “You wanna guess if we’re serious about this song,” Charli intones at the end, as Eilish lets out a conspiratorial giggle. Against all odds, reports of Brat Summer’s death seem to have been slightly exaggerated.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

Jane’s Addiction, “Imminent Redemption”

Perry Farrell howls “Let’s launch us a comeback” in a song that reconvenes the original lineup of Jane’s Addiction 34 years later. It’s blatant, canny, noisy 1990s nostalgia, to go with a reunion tour; the video uses vintage concert footage. Yet the band’s old ingredients are still potent, from the rumbling drumbeat to the echoey guitar swoops, whether or not the band’s fans can still “shake shake shake up more trouble.”

JON PARELES, New York Times

Jack White, “That’s How I’m Feeling”

White flaunts the strengths of vintage classic rock on his surprise-released new album, “No Name.” It’s full of brawny riffs, vocals that work themselves up to hysteria, production with the noisy immediacy of garage rock and lyrics that blur the line between absurdist doggerel and fierce zingers — although many of the songs on “No Name” hint at theological concerns. “That’s How I’m Feeling” is a four-chord stomp about staving off self-doubt: “When the demons arrive/I need to walk towards the light,” he yelps. At one point, White gleefully makes a distorted guitar sound like a busy signal.

JON PARELES, New York Times

COUNTRY

Miranda Lambert, “Alimony”

Lambert enforces marital fidelity in this twangy, traditionalist honky-tonk shuffle. She warns that a straying spouse will find himself not only impoverished but on the losing side of a groaner of a Texas pun: “If you’re gonna leave me in San Antone/Remember the alimony.”

JON PARELES, New York Times

New releases

• J Balvin, “Rayo”

• Chlöe, “Trouble in Paradise”

• King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard, “Flight b741″

• Big Sean, “Better Me Than You”

• Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding, “Milton + Esperanza”