[Source: AP]

When Charli xcx released the barely two-minute, glitched-out “Rock Music,” the first single from “Music, Fashion, Film,” she was almost immediately labeled a provocateur.

The song, with its hyperpop affectations and cheeky, lyrical dedication to craft — “I think the dance floor is dead/So now we’re making rock music” — confused and confounded. Was she trolling? Was she being sincere?

Was the entire record going to be made up of power chords? Was “BRAT,” her zeitgeist-shifting 2024 electro album, worthy of total rejection?

No answers can be found on “Music, Fashion, Film.” It’s up for the listener to decide. What is present are 11 alternative, genre-averse songs with winking rock ’n’ roll instrumentation, preoccupied by artmaking and ego. And what is clear is that Charli xcx and her dedicated team, the co-producers and songwriters A.G. Cook and Finn Keane, have a coherent collaborative vision — just like a band might.

Conceptually, the candor of “BRAT,” at the top of its hedonism, connected the club to a panic attack or, at the very least, a diary page, with its unwavering dedication to lyrical vulnerability.

“Music, Fashion, Film” meets those same depths, but now with anxieties focusing primarily on fame, creativity and performance. (In that way, the song “Rewind” from “BRAT” might’ve been the greatest indication of what was to come. “Wonderin’ ’bout whether I think I deserve commercial success,” she sang.)

Reputation and perception have always mattered deeply to Charli xcx. On “Music, Fashion, Film” they still do — just not as much as her many thoughts on what it means to be an artist — delivered with distortion and humor throughout.

The apathetic spoken-word sections on “Music, Fashion, Film” feel closer to the moody influence of Charli’s beloved Velvet Underground than the dance floor when placed atop fuzzed-out guitars, like on the standout, crushed and choppy “Card Declined.”

“2007,” written about filming TikToks, avoids vapidity atop power chords that play out like someone learning pop-punk covers for the first time, and sets a notable undercurrent for the album: The instrumentation is repeatable, often valuing rhythm-driven minimalism and alternative tunings, the sound of an early musical love.