If you’ve been slacking, it’s time to start paying attention to Charli XCX. She made her name collaborating on super basic hits like “I’m So Fancy” and “I Like It,” which has kept a lot of ~sophisticates~ out of her business, but what she’s got going on is super interesting. Her new album, Charli, cuts the mainstream appeal with a deep interest in the underground, using just enough poppy cush to sustain a wall of dark energy from collaborators like Yaeji and CupcakKe. She’s got the big names on there, too — Lizzo, HAIM and all that — but she only works with artists that she finds legitimately compelling. It’s a real Drake situation, curating worthy side players into the mainstream, only Charli treats artists way better (by, for example, paying and crediting them for their work). Turn up “Shake It” for the collab of the year (Big Freedia!) and some delightfully edgy production. Yes, please.

You knew restaurants would eventually grow out of the “snappy-text-on-a-neon-sign” phase. You also knew something would replace it. Now that we’re in the future, we can name the next wave in wall design: blobs. That is, sweet splashes of color that are more interesting than a wash but still abstract enough to merely frame the object of interest, whether that’s you or your food, in an instagram shot. Looking back, we could have predicted it: every brand and their brother has leaned into the drippy cutout aesthetic since about 2017, leaning halfway-’70s and halfway-Matisse. And that makes plenty of sense: in the ’70s, Vietnam was going down and hippies were coming up, softening aesthetics as an act of protest. And Matisse lived through some of the most terrible shit in history (see: both World Wars) and no amount of unrest ever ruffled his pretty, pretty art. And if you use those lenses to read the current moment, then what you get is either food as (very passive) resistance or restaurants-as-escape. How about both?

While we’re on ~hot restaurant goss~ make sure to read the New Yorker’s take on orange wine. It stings, of course, of the Times’ dig on the aperol spritz, which caused an absolute uproar in the spring, only somehow this one feels more valid (also, to its credit, it’s hilarious). The spritz piece took something that was legitimately, universally beloved and shat in the glass, explaining how dumb we were for having been successfully marketed to (and throwing class shade on cheap prosecco). The orange wine piece, however, says what we were all thinking: despite what your edgy server says about “funk” or “brine,” “more interesting” doesn’t always equate to better. Sometimes you just want a thing to be… gulp… enjoyable?

This one’s said to be the entry-level orange: minimally sophisticated, totally drinkable. You’re welcome.