Live review: Charli xcx, OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Monday 2nd December
Pops of lime green dot the crowd at the sold-out Hydro, making it difficult at a distance to distinguish the hi-vis vested venue staff and the fans dressed in garish BRAT green. It’s the final date of Charli xcx’s four-stop UK tour following her latest album, and the last show of a blockbuster year for the English popstar.
The audience continues to grow as Shygirl opens the night with huge, booming beats and slinking choruses. The English singer is an electrifying presence on the stage, her driving dance grooves ranging from the breathless hip-hop of ‘BDE’, to the sweaty, grimy propulsion of her 2024 single ‘encore’.
Shygirl’s set finishes and immediately the stage is drenched in emerald green mist, signalling Charli’s impending entrance. A huge banner reading ‘GIRL’ is laid out on the empty stage as remixes of BRAT tracks play. There’s a sense of the inner workings of the show being exposed, which recurs throughout the night, with the cameraman later running circles around Charli as she struts, dances and poses.
Charli kicks off by bringing Shygirl back out for a furious, breakneck performance of the remix they recorded together of BRAT’s closing track ‘365’, before slowing down into album opener ‘360’. The first few minutes are a whirlwind, launching between exhilarating renditions of ‘Von dutch’ and ‘Rewind’, as glaring white lights slice round the arena.
Blue mist and hazy piano welcome a slower pace with ‘I might say something stupid’, and phone torches are lit and waved accordingly. But it’s soon back to pulsing grooves and rattling percussion with the audience yelling along to ‘Club classics’ and ‘Apple’, during which cameras focus in on a lucky group of enthusiastic dancers in the crowd.
‘So I’ is a gorgeous, shimmering tribute to the memory of hyperpop pioneer SOPHIE, and in the arena, its thunderous outro feels all-consuming and cataclysmic.
The energy peaks towards the end of the night as Charli torpedoes through the lurching chorus of ‘Sympathy is a knife’ and the restless, gasping verses of ‘Guess’ and finally returns to the familiar groove of ‘365’, which feels like something of a victory lap and one of the highlights of the gig. Charli roams around underneath the walkway that juts out from the main stage, shaking the wire fencing surrounding her like a caged wild animal.
It rounds off an invigorating, triumphant celebration of a monumental album, but, after belting out 2017’s ‘Track 10’ under a shower of rain, Charli completes the show’s euphoric finale with an early career hit. She leaves it to the crowd to scream out the chorus to ‘I Love It’, her 2012 hit collaboration with Swedish synth-poppers Icona Pop, as she tears off her wet clothes with reckless abandon over the song’s revving synths.
