Close enough, welcome back Carole King

Review of Clairo's "Charm"

Clairo—Charm

Released July 12, 2024

This is a record that is begging to be played on vinyl with a candle lit on a rainy day. This is a record that Daisy Jones would’ve just eaten up.

My favorites on this album are “Nomad,” “Sexy to Someone,” “Second Nature,” “Thank You,” and “Add Up My Love.”

“Sexy to Someone” was the first single so I had heard it before listening to the album and I really loved it. It’s vulnerable and represents a different side of romantic pining. One reviewer said it was “devoid of desire,” and cited that reason as a strike against the song, but personally I think the lack of desire is the point of the song. It’s about longing from a distance, wishing to feel that desire but she just can’t. Unlike other songs that tackle similar themes, Clairo’s not focused on one individual person and wondering why they’re not calling her. Instead, she’s just hoping for someone, anyone to notice her.

What I liked about “Thank You” and “Juna” is that they are Carole King in a “I Feel the Earth Move” and “It’s Too Late” sense of Carole King, not “So Far Away” Carole. And “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” is my favorite song off Tapestry, but I really like King’s more upbeat, groove-inflected music, and I like that Cottrill captured some of that spirit on this record.

“Add Up My Love” has echoes of “Sexy to Someone” and again I would usually hate this, but I think this record gets away with it because although Clairo never explicitly calls this a concept album, that’s really how I see it. The album so revolves around the concept of looking from afar, yearning. The album openers “Nomad” and “Sexy to Someone” create a distance between her and any romantic interest. This is the opposite of a situationship, it’s a nothing-ship. She’s on her own, and that’s fine for the most part, but then maybe she sees someone on the street, and for a brief moment, this entire vision flashes before her eyes of what their relationship would be. Without even speaking to them, she knows how this relationship would go, and particularly on “Thank You” and “Add Up My Love,” she knows ultimately how it would end. So to me this album is everything that runs through her head in that split-second between when she sees this person, stops, and decides to keep walking.

The transition on “Glory of the Snow” is really gorgeous, but I don’t like how it just cuts off going into “Pier 4.” I really wish it would have been a smooth continual transition between songs.

For as much as critics called this an r&b and soul flavored record, to me this is a straight up ‘70s Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter record a la James Taylor and Carole King. We hear that in the stripped-back instrumentals—there’s no flash or frills here, just classic instruments, whispery vocals, and powerful songwriting.

Usually I have a gripe with albums that sound too same-y, after so many songs it just gets repetitive and boring. But on this, I kinda liked the trance-like flow you could get into with this record. Particularly with the vocal performance, that whispery, intimate feel, it was really important to build a feeling and a vibe with the sound of this record more than it was to impress with complexity. This record is one to put on, bundle up, and hibernate.

Some reviewers mention a jazz feeling or element to this album, and while I don’t think it’s jazz-sounding, it does have jazz-like qualities in the production. Jazz operates in many ways different than other genres like pop, rock, or country. Jazz is a subculture unto itself, and like all cultures, it has its own set of rules and expectations. Within jazz, the thing that we are talking is the performance, different to the thing being the recording like it is in popular music genres, or the thing being the composition the way it is in classical or Western Art Music. This whole concept of “the thing” we’re talking about is called Ontology, and musicologist Lydia Goehr tackles Ontology more specifically in her writing about the work-concept¹, which challenges the implicit idea that what is considered the musical work is fixed and unchanging, but rather it does change in relation to performance expectations and traditions,² like how we see in different expectations in different genres. Because of this focus on the work being the performance in jazz, it’s less important for musicians to stick to the written composition, if there is one, and no two recordings of jazz sound the same because of the importance of improvisation and feeling the moment. Jazz as a genre operates in this jamming way, and it is in that way that I see the comparisons between Clairo’s Charm and jazz. Clairo also takes a laid-back, jamming kind of approach to this album. It sounds impromptu and improvised, although we know it’s likely not and it’s likely planned out ahead of time and edited afterwards. But the sound of it being in the moment creates an immediacy and a present feeling that you might experience watching a live jazz performance.

Not only is Charm self-produced by Cottrill alongside Leon Michels, but this is also her first album to be totally self-released. Her first two records were released under her Fader deal, with Sling being released under her own subsidiary label, Clairo Records. Now, the sole label listed under Charm is Clairo Records, LLC, making this album a completely independent release. Interestingly, not much more information can be dug up about Clairo Records aside from a brief, passing mention in a number of reviews. When an artist leaves their label to go independent, wouldn’t that be a big deal, at least big enough that you’d see articles written about it? Maybe it’s the case that Clairo isn’t a big enough artist in the mainstream for industry publications to write about it, but it seems odd that there would no coverage about it at all. It is possible that there’s more to come, maybe an official announcement and launch, but we’ll have to wait and see if there’s more to be said on the topic of Clairo’s indie label.

Before listening to this album, I didn’t know a lot about Clairo as an artist and after listening and researching, I still don’t really know a lot and honestly, that’s how it should be. We’re due for a reclusive artist who’s happy to make their art, lets it speak for itself, then hibernates until the next one. And of course I can respect her wanting to live a quiet, private life. We’ve seen what happens when artists, particularly women making pop music, (or really any kind of music) share too much of their life—the public sees it as an invitation and frankly gets too invested to the point where it’s no longer fun but kinda weird and invasive. So I don’t blame Clairo at all for withholding personal details as a protective measure against that. I just hope the public doesn’t see her want for privacy as a challenge.

It’s a shame this was released in July because this has rainy autumn day written all over it. It’s gotten some buzz, including a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Album, but I think unfortunately this album is at odds with the brat summer, Short’n’Sweet Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan disco-pop vibe that we’re in right now. Had this come out in 2021 post-folklore I think it could have made a bigger splash. Again it’s really a shame because this is such a cozy record, but I don’t know if we’re in a culturally cozy mood anymore.

But I also think this album comes at just the right time as 73 percent of Gen-Z report experiencing a loneliness epidemic. A number of factors has contributed to this overall feeling, partly leftover from the pandemic, but also as a result of apps changing dating culture, the rise of low-effort situationships, and the rise of conservatism amongst Gen-Z men co-occuring with a rise of left-leaning Gen-Z women. Regardless of the reasons for this loneliness epidemic, that means that Clairo’s looking from afar and yearning makes this album highly relatable to generation of people struggling to relate to each other.

When Cottrill signed her record deal with Fader in 2018, there was some discussion of her family connections and accusations of nepotism. She obviously resented these accusations of being an “industry plant,” saying the accusations were sexist in their thinking that there must be a man behind her success. She later expanded on her comments, saying “I signed with Fader because I’ve known Jon Cohen my whole life…I definitely am not blind to the fact that things have been easier for me than other people’s experiences.” When it comes to nepotism, particularly in the entertainment industries, there’s two main scenarios: there’s someone like Miley Cyrus or Jakob Dylan whose parent is also a musician and there’s evidence of a guiding hand from someone in the same industry. But then there are artists like Maya Hawke, Matty Healy of the the 1975 or the Lawrence siblings where their famous or privileged parents work in a different industry than the one their children are entering. Healy has weathered similar allegations that his parents, actors Denise Welch and Tim Healy, helped him and his band get started. He has often made the point of just because his parents are actors, what does that have to do with his band having a number one album in America? To an extent, I agree, but what Healy doesn’t take into account is that yes, his parents being actors maybe doesn’t help directly in his music career, but the financial privilege of financial security, not needing to work young out of necessity, and having a house with garage space for his band to rehearse, all are privileges that come from his parents’ success. Likewise with Clairo, she has also acknowledged, despite her father not working in music directly, not only the privilege to get an opportunity with someone like Cohen who her family knows personally, but also the financial privilege and security that she gets from her family. She said in an interview with Rolling Stone, “It would be stupid of me to not acknowledge the privilege I had from the start to be able to sign somewhere where there’s trust, to be able to sign a record deal that doesn’t revolve around keeping myself afloat financially.”  I can appreciate that she is willing to speak about the accusations and refutes them in a way that feels firm, but even, unlike some other children of famous parents who can bend towards the defensive when asked about their familial support. I would even go a step further to claim that we should embrace nepo babies and push them to create bolder, more experimental art. If they have the financial privilege and security to not make commercially minded work, then they should use that to their advantage, an advantage not all artists have, and they should use that to be some of the most innovative, creative artists out there.

I really did enjoy this album, especially as I was listening to it while writing, all cozied up with my candle burning as the sun started to set at 4:30pm. But I think Clairo is suffering from a case of the Golden Hour blues. Like when Kacey Musgraves released Golden Hour to rave reviews and then her album following, star-crossed was met less than favorably because everyone just wanted a Golden Hour part 2, I fear that this album isn’t getting it’s due because her past albums Immunity (2019) and Sling (2021) were so critically beloved. This was my first Clairo album that I listened to, so maybe I don’t know what I’m missing, or maybe it was just the absolute barrage of new releases this year that this album seemed to go quickly and quietly from the public consciousness. But now that the weather is finally right for this album (yes, there is right and wrong weather for music, no I will not be elaborating just now) I’m hopeful it might get a second chance.

1

Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, November 1, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195324785.001.0001.

2

Beard, David, and Kenneth Gloag. “Work.” Essay. In Musicology: The Key Concepts., 143–143. New York, NY: Routledge, 2016.