Music reviews: Charli XCX, Megan Moroney, and Mumford & Sons

‘Wuthering Heights’ by Charli XCX

★★★

Give Charli XCX credit, said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal.
With her new album featuring several songs from the new movie Wuthering Heights, the pop pioneer who made 2024’s Brat has delivered “a satisfying listen as well as a canny solution to the problem of how to follow up a breakthrough record.” Invited to create music for the film, Charli “seems to have viewed the project as an aesthetic challenge, a chance to make sticky electro-pop about love and death with orchestrations that blow up every breathy sigh to IMAX proportions.” A couple of tunes don’t quite fit the theme, including “Out of Myself,” which is “effortlessly catchy” in its own right. Otherwise, the album “holds together beautifully.” The middle of the record “really soars,” said Liz Shannon Miller in Consequence. The single “Chains of Love” pairs “big orchestral swirls” with “a rough electro edge” to generate an “aura of tortured romance.” For some reason, Charli chooses to close the set with “two relatively forgettable, upbeat tracks.” As in the movie that inspired it, “there’s messiness here, and messiness feels like the point.”

‘Cloud 9’ by Megan Moroney

★★★

“Fans of country music should be cheering for Cloud 9,” said Trigger Coroneos in Saving Country Music. Yes, Megan Moroney is “not a strong singer” and her latest is “more pop than country.” But at a time when the pop music world is becoming more country, the 28-year-old Georgia native is doing her part to steer country back toward personal songs written by the person who sings them, and she “does so in a way that’s entertaining, infectious, and widely appealing.” Moroney’s third album seems likely to launch her into megastardom, yet “what’s striking about Cloud 9 is how little it strays from her past approach,” said Jonathan Bernstein in Rolling Stone. It’s “Music Row songcraft dressed up with Gen Z internet speak” and “set to muscular pop rock,” albeit with a touch of twang. Still, “Moroney is often a deft and surprising storyteller,” and these songs have “newfound emotional complexity.” On the country waltz “Bells & Whistles,” she sings as the other woman in an affair, expressing admiration for her counterpart before tweaking the refrain to reveal self-loathing. “I’m not me,” she sings, “without the bells and the whistles.”

‘Prizefighter’ by Mumford & Sons

★★

“Mumford & Sons have achieved massive success, but they’re still desperate for respect,” said Hannah Jocelyn in Pitchfork. The British band’s sixth album arrives as the three original members of the former quartet are well positioned to re-establish themselves as the elder statesmen of the stomp-clap folk pop that’s recently been revived by younger artists. Unfortunately, on this record’s first six songs, “the choruses can’t muster up the old dopamine hits.” Only on the back half, as guest stars including Gracie Abrams “expand the band’s palette” and Marcus Mumford starts singing about things he cares about does the music come alive. I hear the entire project as the sound of a seasoned band “trusting their instincts, pairing earnest reflection with folk-pop musicality that favors emotion over reinvention,” said James Christopher Monger in AllMusic. Though it’s only “marginally better” than 2025’s Rushmere, this album, recorded under the guidance of the National’s Aaron Dessner, “reinforces Mumford & Sons’ reputation as purveyors of quality comfort food.” It’s also “deeply rooted in the folk and country traditions the band knows intimately.”