Music review An elegant, brutal howl sees off Brat summer

When Charli xcx says her first new material in more than a year is "something entirely new, entirely opposite" to the sound she pursued on the eradefining Brat, she isn't joking.

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Taken from the soundtrack to Emerald Fennell's forthcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights, the darkly gothic House bears almost no relation in sound or mood to Brat: it was, she says, inspired by John Cale's description of the sound of his old mob the Velvet Underground as "elegant and brutal".

Always skilled and generous at collaboration, here Charli xcx cedes two-thirds of the vocals to Cale.

He delivers a monologue - oblique and initially conversational, it turns increasingly ominous - in a voice that's rich, sonorous and, to a certain kind of music fan at least, immediate recognisable.