Australian dark-pop singer CXLOE has been plugging away ever since she released “Tough Love” back in 2017, and now she’s shared her debut album, Shiny New Thing.
Named after her disdain for fleeting relevancy, the record argues that staying true to your roots and embracing duality, rather than being put in a box, can also lead to great heights. Along the way, CXLOE contemplates if her lofty ambitions of stardom are worth trading her soul to an ugly industry (“I could let you own me/Your favorite trophy/Please,” she belts on the title track) overtop an unpredictable blend of styles that switches up across 13 songs, from electronic rock to bouncy pop to ’80s synth. It all adds up to a striking and thought-provoking debut from an artist who creates with painstaking passion.
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“When looking back on the music I’ve been writing for the past two years, a common theme emerged,” CXLOE says. “Specifically tracks like ‘Shiny New Thing,’ ‘Shapeshifter,’ and ‘Cheating on Myself’ delve into my complex relationship with identity, the necessity to morph into whatever is required in the moment — sometimes facetiously, sometimes out of pure survival instinct. The decision to create an album gave me the opportunity and time to experiment with diverse sounds, allowing me to reconcile all these different sides and realize that there is beauty in pop music’s obsession with reinvention. This album embraces the fact that artists can be multifaceted without compromising their authenticity in pursuit of becoming the next ‘shiny new thing.’”
Stream CXLOE’s Shiny New Thing below.
