English pop singer- songwriter Charli XCX’s sixth album, “Brat,” oscillates between hedonism and anxiety — the euphoria of a late night on the dance floor and the creeping disquietude of the morning after — as much as it does her in-between status as pop queen of the underground and sometimes mainstream success story.

The latter has arrived a few times in her career, like in her contribution to the “Barbie” soundtrack, her feature on Iggy Azalea’s once- inescapable “Fancy” and her guest appearance on Icona Pop’s 2012 hit “I Love It,” which she also co-wrote. Something started to shift in 2016, around her “Vroom Vroom” EP, when Charli XCX perhaps realized pop superstardom wasn’t for her — she has long suffered from being too cult-cool, too forthright for the A-list — and began collaborating with the future-seeking, hyperpop PC Music collective.

This album builds from her previous work, with its brash, bombastic synth-pop, but returns to her U.K. rave roots. The single “360” is the intersection of both, an ode to the internet’s outsider “it” girls — a quality mirrored in the paparazzi-pop and Y2K bravado of “Von Dutch” and the hyper-referentiality of “Club Classics.”

“Everything is Romantic” opens with strings and woodwinds as Charli XCX talk-sings about falling in love before the song detours into U.K. garage. It’s a lavish combination, a one-song case for subwoofers reaching the same kind of emotional ascendency associated with orchestral music.

Interwoven in songs about seeking pleasure and status is also a kind of insecurity: “Rewind” is a club banger about poor body image, not feeling successful enough, concerning yourself with things like chart position. “Apple” considers familial legacy, while “Girl, So Confusing” teases a rivalry with another pop performer. It’s all effortlessly danceable, both the moments of metaphysical frustration and chemical elation.

But the tension at the heart of “Brat” is best illustrated in the final two tracks, arguably the most gorgeous of the 15-song collection. On “I Think About It All the Time,” she leaves the club to consider motherhood. Would having a child give her a new sense of purpose?

“And a baby might be mine/ ’Cause maybe one day I might/ If I don’t run out of time/ Would it make me miss all my freedom?” she sings. “Should I stop my birth control?/ ’Cause my career feels so small/ In the existential scheme of it all.”

Closer “365” returns to the cheery production of opener “360” before unraveling into something much harder. And then there she is, back on the dance floor. — Maria Sherman, Associated Press

Jazz pianist Fred Hersch fully embraces the freedom that comes with improvisation on his solo album “Silent, Listening,” spontaneously composing and performing tunes that are often without melody, meter or form.

Listening to them can be challenging and rewarding. The Grammy nominee’s impressionistic approach creates colors that are subdued and lovely. It’s chamber jazz — closer to classical music than the blues — that will be familiar to fans of ECM Records founder Manfred Eicher, who produced.

Hersch returns to the Swiss studio where he recorded his first ECM album, “The Song Is You,” a 2022 set with trumpeter Enrico Rava. The sound is pristine and airy, in classic fashion for the label, and Hersch makes full use of his instrument.

With a light touch and disdain for anything showy, he plays single notes in meticulous extended sequences. There are also clusters that splash, splay and sashay, and an occasional forte chord for startling contrast. Sometimes a tune emerges, such as near the end of the contemplative “The Wind,” and amid the unsteady but seductive pulse of “Starlight.”

The amorphous, atonal music contrasts with his lyrical style on covers. The Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn tune “Star-Crossed Lovers” becomes a wee-hours examination of melancholy melody. Hersch interprets “Softly, as In a Morning Sunrise” as a jaunty toe-tapper, and he saves for last his bluest performance, “Winter of My Discontent,” which achieves a glow that lingers. — Steven Wine, Associated Press