Clairo has never raised her voice

My non-review of her third studio album, Charm.

Clairo is not a big venue artist (non-derogatory). I’ve seen her perform thrice. First at the Wiltern in LA, and the most recent time at the Greek. For the former, it was my first October living on my own in LA. I was a baby gay, one foot out of the closet, the other resting tentatively on my mother’s big silk rug. It was comfortable there. I got my basic needs met, and my childhood cat purred me to sleep every night.

But like a month later, my cat died and I wanted to go on a date. And so I opened a door to another door, to another door, to another door, to Caroline Polachek apparently, to apartment listings on Facebook Marketplace, to a new life. After coming out first to the first person who ever came out to me, I was ready to make the transition. Sort of. I went on my first date with a girl in secret. It was exciting, to share a secret with myself and explore it. To be liberated by the hum of pleasure without audience, without attention, without attached outcome.

“I can feel there’s something in the between”, Claire coos on Charm’s underrated track “Glory of the Snow”. Is she referring to that space between knowing and sharing? Or maybe she’s describing the felicitous warmth of sidewalk concrete a few minutes after sunset, before night digs in. Or the quick conversation had over-the-shoulder with a hallway neighbor, keys fidgeting, breaking the pace. Maybe none of it. But much like the rest of the record, Claire muses on transitory states of being. While Immunity and Sling sink into anxious uncertainty, depression, existentialism, resigned emotional compromise, and light-footed anticipation, Charm is just giggling. She dances around themes of longing, limerence, acting on impulse, unspoken thoughts and forthcoming desire, the need to be seen. Accompanied by the jazzy, old soul leanings of Big Crown Records’ Leon Michaels, Clairo gets to be lighter, flirtier, charmed.

Everyone has a lot to say about the influence of this new producer and their creative relationship, which is understandable. Leon’s work is beautiful, and his hand in making this record is obvious. It’s also obvious that Claire Cottrill is a student of her craft. From her recorded work and quick to be buried YouTube covers, to her occasional Spotify screenshots on her Instagram story, the proof is in the pudding. (Oh my god, I just Googled it, and guess what? This phrase is “an alteration of the older expression the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” LOL! Yeah, she ate.) So, sure, I hear Leon Michaels as much as I hear Billy Joel, Carole King, Broadcast, John Lennon, Simon & Garfunkel, the 1970s et al. But on Charm, I also hear Clairo. I hear “Pretty Girl” and I especially hear “4EVER”. I’m excited about those references more than anything. I can hear her return to sensibility before it was attached to commercial success — the anxiety of which she referenced on 2021 Sling’s opening track, Bambi. “I move so I don’t have to think twice.”

It’s good now to hear her confidence lead. Charm’s opening track, Nomad, admits, “I’d run the risk of losing everything… touch-starved and shameless.” Oh, to be a veteran of shame. Nothing like it. Claire’s newfound slinky candor is utterly delectable. Songs like “Sexy to Someone” and “Juna” plop out of my headphones like overripe plums, and I’m just a baby deer in the woods in need of something sweet to snack on. Her vocal performance on these two tracks are some of my favorites on the record because they’re the most emotive - playful echos of secrets and confessions trace each lyric. She definitely sounds like she’s having the most fun she’s ever had on this album. In an interview with Matt Wilkinson for Apple Music, he jokes that Claire should make a screamo EP, to which she laughs, “I don’t think that’s coming. I have never raised my voice.” At least she knows it!

Claire’s got sleepy vocals. Perpetual pillow talk, words that spill out with the bashful attitude and draw to attention of a parenthetical. Some people have reacted to her careful whispers critically on this album, which to some degree, is warranted. But I think it’s mostly a matter of mixing and genre. On Immunity, Claire’s soft alto takes lead with Rostam Batmanglij’s alternative pop production and pairs delightfully well, like prosciutto and melon. Then on Sling, her signature cartoon lamb quality falls subtly in step with her and Jack Antanoff’s version of somber chamber folk. Now, on Charm, something different. A challenge for Claire, to create a vocal meadow in the field of this bedroom-jazz recipe she and Leon wrote together. On those aforementioned favorite tracks of mine, (plus “Glory of the Snow” and “Terrapin”) it works, baby. You can feel what she’s feeling, her voice simmers over the production like conversation on a great first date. I do think it mostly comes down to instrumentation and mixing. She gets a little lost on bouncier tracks like “Thank You” and “Add Up My Love”, which are nostalgic and truly pleasant, but could use the extra lung capacity.

Whatever decibel she’s working with it, the kid’s just got it. Charm is a good album. It’s an evolution, an experiment and a culmination, altogether. All of Clairo’s work has stood alone successfully, but in collective harmony they glitter. The gentle sheen of authentic artistic development and commitment slathered over every track. It feels rare that an artist can do that—build upon and connect different projects the way she has. During her Apple Music interview, Claire also admits that it was hard for her to find a through line in her old music. As a listener and fan, I was puzzled to hear that. The line from early, teen Clairo to the woman on Charm is blatant to me; it’s direct. A culmination of her favorite 20th century influences and her own indie pop imagination. I’m sure she sees it now, but hearing her thought process forced me to think of myself—(Leo Moon)—both my art and my personhood. Does my creative mission, or my inner essence, vibrate off the page at a similar frequency? Is is trackable? Am I obvious to you?

The same can often be said for queerness. Is there a consistent quality? I think so. Something about it, snowballing upwards somehow. “I kind of thought so.” That’s what I said to my friend, the first one who ever came out to me. I don’t know if that, muttered between bids of gratitude and unconditional love, felt good to hear. I never asked her. In my own experience, it can feel good. Maybe not at that exact moment, miss 18-year-old Nikki, but certainly later, sometime, it could. Like: tell me you saw it! Sewn into my story. I don’t need the validation now, I’m well past that, but I’ll admit it: I like it. I love the inevitability of being myself. In art, in love, in essence. Must be some loose version of fate I’m into.

The second time I saw Clairo perform was in 2022 at the Greek Theater. All I have to say about that is, get her out of there. Send her back to the Wiltern, stick a Persian rug on the stage. Better yet, force our asses to drive. PLEASE! Claire, this is my plea to you. Pappy & Harriet’s in Joshua Tree. Ever heard of it? Sit on a stool, be the little lamb you are, stars on your head. Let me tell you a secret, “I see kismet sinking in.”

<3

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