Charli xcx’s Sept. 24 stop at TD Garden was nothing short of electric, but its core managed to create a raw and vulnerable portrait of the artist behind it all.

The stadium was filled with loud, propulsive live instrumentation mixed with the electronic production that has become a staple of the pop star’s latest albums. Though the setlist largely featured tracks off of her most recent 2026 album, “Music, Fashion, Film” — after which she named her tour — the inclusion of older tracks made for a comprehensive look at the recurrent themes across Charli xcx’s discography.

The British singer arrived in a burst of flame, jumping into the lead single “Rock Music” from the new LP. Though, the song itself is almost a pastiche of rock songs from eras gone by.

Standing on the second tier of a multi-level stage topped with a large, fake speaker as smoke seeped out from its seams, Charli xcx was joined by live accompaniment on drums, synthesizer, bass, and guitar rising up from inside the mesh structure.

What remained striking throughout the set was the apparent awareness of the artifice of it all. The stage had lights which broke through the holes in the metal and revealed the scaffold structure interior. And the music — especially that off of the remarkably emotional and poignant “Music, Fashion, Film” — belies its pop and pop-adjacent aesthetic to get at something deeper and more visceral.

Even as Charli xcx drew from deeper into her catalogue, the same sensation became clear. With the surprise song of the night — “Silver Cross” from her 2019 album “Charli” — the relatively simple staging and lighting allowed for the potent emotion of the song to come to the forefront.

For all its grandeur, the show could feel quite intimate. During “2007” the stage transformed into a house party, with dancers drinking from red solo cups and smoking cigarettes.

Yet even underneath the intimacy — and throughout the concert — there was a palpable engagement with spectacle. Two giant screens flanked the stage, with camera operators circling Charli xcx and the band as they sang and played. The shots were evocative of a feature film, with different sections of the set projected in high-contrast black and white.

Aside from the rawness of emotion displayed throughout, Charli xcx remained unabashedly forward with the show’s sexuality, a common theme in her recent work. The high-energy “pink diamond” was a bombastic highlight of the night, as dancers imitated sex acts on stage as the music blasted. Even during the breakdown in “Guess,” large air cannons aptly shot bundles of underwear into the crowd.

Charli xcx has a real knack for creating images onstage. During several songs, she utilized the catwalk and her backup dancers to make striking visuals both from the audience’s perspective, and with the camera.

Even at times with slower tracks, she still brought an explosive energy. As the song “House” off her 2026 “Wuthering Heights” album started, she set off small fireworks above the stage in line with the track’s percussion.

The show was masterfully paced. Moments of relative quiet were sandwiched between high-octane, raucous tracks. At one point, Charli xcx pulled several songs from her seminal 2024 album “BRAT” for an extended sequence that felt like standing in a club, as she implored the audience to jump and dance along.

The crowd was fully along for the ride. When “Vroom Vroom” began to play, the audience sang along as loud as they could, clamoring for airtime over SOPHIE’s booming electronic production. During “party 4 u,” two fans sitting in the top of the stands got a touch of Charli xcx’s attention, as midway through the song, she pointed to them singing along, leaning over the railing.

Her ability to masterfully craft controlled spectacle — and the tension of the almost tacitly acknowledged artifice of the set — came to a head at the end of the concert.

The Grammy-award winner ended on “No One Lasts Forever” with an extended spoken outro from filmmaker David Cronenberg about the nature of immortal art. It was a deeply moving moment and one which entirely recontextualized the rest of the performance, making crystal-clear that no moment was without intention and purpose.

“Oblivion is freedom,” Cronenberg said as Charli xcx, her guitarist, and the backup dancers all gathered for a final pose on the edge of the stage near where she began the show. The cameras zoomed out slowly, as the pose began to look more like a painting.

Some art may last forever, but the space and environment of the concert is a fleeting moment, free from judgement or worry. Charli xcx knew it; so she sent it off with a bang.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.