Char­li XCX: Alone Together

Released in May 2020, ​‘How I’m Feel­ing Now’ is the fourth stu­dio album from singer-song­writer Char­li XCX – tech­ni­cal­ly speaking.

Writ­ten, record­ed, mixed and launched from the artist’s home in Los Ange­les in a five-week peri­od dur­ing the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, the DIY album shares more DNA with the avant-popstar’s 2017 mix­tapes ​‘Num­ber 1 Angel’ and ​‘Pop 2’ than her pre­vi­ous stu­dio ventures.

The album’s fre­net­ic elec­tron­ic beats and mat­ter-of-fact lyrics cap­ture the acute rest­less­ness of lock­down, and mim­ic the way the mind races to keep fear and uncer­tain­ty at bay.

Bradley & Pablo’s doc­u­men­tary fea­ture takes a sim­i­lar­ly lo-fi approach, pre­sent­ing the cre­ation of ​‘How I’m Feel­ing Now’ through a com­pos­ite of the artist’s self-tapes, Insta­gram live record­ings, tweets and Zoom calls with pro­duc­ers AG Cook and BJ Bur­ton, as well as clips from Charli’s own fans – known as the Angels – strug­gling through their respec­tive lock­down experiences.

The deci­sion to frame the mak­ing of the album through the lens of indi­vid­ual fans, many of whom belong to the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty, dis­tin­guish­es Alone Togeth­er from many recent pop docs, giv­ing the film a unique, inclu­sive per­spec­tive. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, how­ev­er, this cre­ates more dis­tance between the view­er and the artist herself.

Just as the film begins to dig into Charli’s per­son­al anx­i­eties around her work, her rela­tion­ship and her self-image, it cuts back to one of her fans doing their make­up or watch­ing her Insta­gram feed from their bed­room. And with a brisk 70-minute run­time, Alone Togeth­er doesn’t grant us enough time with these fans to make their sto­ries feel complete.

We feel their pain in iso­la­tion and joy in online con­nec­tion, and we wor­ry for their safe­ty liv­ing in unsup­port­ive house­holds, but we’re pre­sent­ed with too many names in too lit­tle time to under­stand who they real­ly are as people.

As a result, the film is strongest when it cen­tres Char­li, par­tic­u­lar­ly when inter­ro­gat­ing what com­pelled her to make this album this way. ​“I’ve got seri­ous issues with the way I han­dle my work and the way I depend on work to make me feel like a good per­son,” she says at one point.

Her part­ner Huck Kwong describes Char­li as a worka­holic. Lat­er, she films her­self cry­ing after a dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion with her ther­a­pist. ​“I’m sup­posed to be inspir­ing or some­thing, and I hate myself for say­ing that, but I’m not, and it makes me feel like a liar.” These scenes paint a por­trait of an artist with a dif­fi­cult, at times tox­ic, rela­tion­ship to her work and her iden­ti­ty, even while find­ing joy and pur­pose through cre­ativ­i­ty and collaboration.

The film eschews con­ven­tion­al talk­ing-head inter­views but falls back on news­reel tran­si­tions to mark time through­out the pan­dem­ic (the Chet Han­ks, Vanes­sa Hugens, and ​‘Imag­ine’ videos from March 2020 all make an appear­ance). Bradley & Pablo, whose pre­vi­ous work with Char­li includes direct­ing the music videos for ​‘Vroom Vroom’ and ​‘5 in the Morn­ing,’ also incor­po­rate scenes of a 3D cityscape to rep­re­sent the dig­i­tal world of the Angels, who then hov­er around on-screen as lit­er­al ani­mé angels.

It’s a bit hokey, and cer­tain­ly jar­ring for those who aren’t already inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the visu­al aes­thet­ics of pop artists like the late pro­duc­er and fre­quent Char­li XCX col­lab­o­ra­tor SOPHIE. But it’s also true to the spir­it of Charli’s fan­base. Alone Togeth­er invites us into this com­mu­ni­ty and gives fans some insight into Charli’s psy­chol­o­gy, although per­haps the most evoca­tive work chron­i­cling this peri­od in the artist’s career is the album itself.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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