For a select few, when Charli XCX says to make a pilgrimage upstate in the middle of the day on a Thursday, you ditch work early, try to put together an outfit that looks both “fall” and “slutty,” and then board the 12:35 Metro-North to Poughkeepsie with a final destination in Cornwall. No one said keeping up with brat autumn was going to be easy.
The event drawing everyone to the outdoor museum Storm King, an Instagram-worthy spot just three hours north of the city, was a listening party for the latest edition of Charli’s original Brat album, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. Charli and her creative team erected a sculpture in the middle of a field especially for the occasion — a larger-than-life brat-green vinyl cover with the new features and artists, as teased on billboards across America earlier in the week. The internet joked that the party would out everyone with a “fake job.” They were not wrong. Many of the people there didn’t want to share personal information when asked about the show because then their bosses would find out why they took a sick day. “Thanks so much for coming. I was worried, like, that no one would,” Charli told the crowd, full of dedicated fans in the aforementioned slutty fall attire, an occasional random who wanted to go to Storm King, and probably too many journalists. “We’re fine-art bitches now!”
A downside of having a party-girl-branded event at 3 p.m. in the wholesome location of Cornwall is that everyone’s a little confused about the appropriate energy level. There were black T-shirts reading “Art” in the Brat font being handed out; there was free food and drinks (featuring a green martini in a plastic cup); and Charli wore a fur-trimmed coat. The whole event was livestreamed on Twitch, as part of its play to broaden its streaming horizons beyond gamers and work with DJ culture. According to a Twitch-hired photographer, the event was being filmed for the stream using cell phones instead of professional camera equipment, as requested by Charli’s team. The grimier the stream, the better — that’s brat.
After about an hour of watching Charli bop to her songs, which leaked earlier that week (“If you’re singing the words, I’ll know,” she jokingly warned), she left — with two new songs yet to be heard. She needed to start bumpin’ it to Denver for the next stop on her Sweat tour, but first she played the crowd-favorite “Girl, So Confusing” remix featuring Lorde. On the way out, I asked a Storm King employee, Aaron, what he thinks of this whole thing — people traveling hours and leaving their fake jobs to listen to a remix of a song that has been out since June: “She’s clearly a people person.” A people person, a bitch who loves fine art, and just that girl. As a friend put it in a text after watching the stream: “Not her playing six songs off her phone and dipping lmao.” In all, despite rumors of a brat autumn (or Brat fall, as the Americans would say), the event felt like a capstone rather than an ushering in of a new season. It completed a New York triptych, from Boiler Room to the Sweat tour to, now, a remix album at Storm King on a Thursday. That’s art.