Clairo Finds Her Charm on Psychedelic, Colorful Third LP

Clairo once turned Radio City Music Hall into a living room. It was a cozy and casual scene; two alpine lamps arched a dim but warm spotlight. All along the stage floor were large, pear-like lanterns glowing a syrupy amber. A seven-piece band was spaced evenly across a raised platform while Clairo was leveled, centered and singing as if she had personally invited all 6,000 attendees herself—as if the stage was one big conversation pit and she was in the middle, telling a story.

This set-up made perfect sense for the rather demure “pop star.” Like Clairo herself, her voice is subdued. Delicate and buttery, she sings uniformly in her plaintive sweet spot. Her songs too thrive in the tender; in the exchanges that can only be spoken softly, while leaning in. She’s drawn to flickers of intimacy, attuned to their importance and particularity. But like a moth, she’s just as eager to fly away from excitement than she is to go toward the flame. That same evening, Clairo played “Nomad”—an unreleased track but staple of her 2022 Sling Tour setlist. A live saxophone belted over sunny piano as she debated whether to try for a new connection or spare herself and retreat; become nomadic. “I’d rather wake up alone than be reminded of how it was a dream this time,” she sings in the chorus.

Three years later, “Nomad” has returned as the opening track for Clairo’s third album, Charm. The track has gotten thicker, however—intensified from a simmered, two-year-long reduction. There’s no saxophone this time but a piano and two guitars: one sliding carefully, another circling and arpeggiated. Clairo seems to stiffen at the bridge as baritone strings pull at her doubt: “It’s always the same / Every time I try for someone new / I just think of you.“ It’s more savory, but the meaning is still the same: To be alone, or not to be alone, that is still the question.

After recording her sophomore LP Sling in Allaire, a famed, off-the-grid studio in Woodstock, New York, Clairo made the decision to stay and fully relocate upstate. She has slightly—actually—become nomadic, and this isolation exemplifies the very tension of Charm. The tracks often feel like two hesitant but familiar hands reaching for each other, but never fully touching.

Really, it’s no surprise that Clairo retreated into the woods. Since high school, she’s had some sort of buzz swarming around her. At 13 she was making Brockhampton and Amy Winehouse covers on YouTube. At 14, she was being covered by MTV. Three years later, she started writing her own songs and uploading them to SoundCloud. By age 19 her bedroom pop track “Pretty Girl” took over the internet—resulting in her dropping out of Syracuse and opening for Dua Lipa. Singing in front of her computer in her tiny dorm and then, practically overnight, taking the main stage of Coachella was probably a lot to handle, especially for someone who remains so reserved—especially for someone so young.

After the success of “Pretty Girl,” Clairo quickly released her Diary 001 EP to parlay her sudden fortune. It was a fun collection, featuring her other semi-hits “4Ever” and “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos” and a few new lo-fi pop favors. She then debuted the Rostam Batmanglij-produced Immunity, which also featured Danielle Haim on drums. The sound still remained lively and traditionally indie-pop, yet the songwriting had noticeably developed. It was there that Clairo reckoned with more “adult” content, like suicidal ideations on “Alewife” and finding balance in an unprecedented queer relationship on “Sofia.”

Like any developing musician—and especially one who rose to fame in adolescence—Clairo naturally wanted to be taken more seriously. While expected, this effort could’ve been a reaction to her unfair branding as an“industry plant” simply because she grew up wealthy and her CEO dad was longtime friends with someone at her label, Fader. Like any smart (and talented) person would, she used her privilege and connections to her advantage and propelled her career. On her sophomore LP Sling, she continued to do just that: she taught herself how to play piano, discovered what vibrato is and narrowed her sound even further. With production from pop-music architect Jack Antonoff, she trimmed the fat of any bedroom pop qualities—trading midi drums and hooks for acoustic treading and folky solos. Clairo seemed focused on Songwriting, proper, penning songs about isolation (“Amoeba,” “Bambi”) and suggesting her retreat was due to her fame and distaste for an overly sexualized music industry. As she sings on “Blouse”: “Why do I tell you how I feel / When you’re just looking down the blouse? / If touch could make them hear, then touch me now.”

Where Sling narrowed, Charm expands; Clairo reprises the sophomore LP’s live analog instrumentation and doubles down on her hand of horns, woodwinds and synths. While Sling had a thin atmosphere—one that dispersed like smoke around a fire, sort of hiding her hyper-compressed vocals behind the orchestration—Charm finds her crisper than ever. She’s clear, upfront and conducting the show with co-producer Leon Michels of the lo-fi soul jazz outfit El Michels Affair and of Dan Auerbach’s psych-rock band the Arcs. After isolating, Clairo is even more lyrically present, finally emerging from her shell on slow waltz “Terrapin.” “We’re all afraid and shy away,” she reckons, “but now I find I guess I don’t shy.”

Like Sling, most songs on Charm are still only a slight foot tap. Flutes often become harmonies. Harmonies become more harmonies, as vocals are double-tracked and layered over each other like that of Elliott Smith or Judee Sill. Now, with assistance from players in the Menahan Street Band, Charm is anchored by more psychedelic and jazzy undertones—a clear example of Michels’s influence. On “Echo,” a stuttering organ and dripping tremolo creates something like Portishead if they were a lounge band, as does the trip-hop beat—created from Clairo’s own giggle—in “Second Nature,” which swivels alongside bouncing staccato keys. “Our love is meant to be shared / While our love goes nowhere” sings Clairo in “Echo,” before the song pulses into a vamp. “Juna” similarly swings, as a twinkling piano rises and falls like a fluttering stomach. Clairo gets a mouth trumpet solo before a full band—with real trumpets—comes in and soars, letting the butterflies take flight.“I don’t get too intimate / Why would I let you in?” she hesitates. “But, I think again.”

Since Clairo’s voice is so monotone, it can quickly lose its novelty. To counteract this, she often pulls a lever and changes the key—or the tempo, or both. It’s one of her signatures by now, and it works particularly well on Charm by proxy of its jazz-like colors and flopping rhythms. During “Slow Dance,” she chugs along before pausing her symphony and emphasizing only the drums and globby bass. “What is it that’s keeping one foot out and the other crawling in bed?” she asks. On “Thank You,” Clairo suddenly disrupts the bright, jogging pace into a slow motion crawl. “All because of you,” she laments over slowly rolled drums and fluttering flutes, frustrated by the aftermath of a doomed relationship. “When I met you, I knew it,” she admits. “I’d thank you for your time.”

In 2021, Clairo told Rolling Stone that Immunity “is talking about all the things I feel,” while Sling “is getting to the root of the problem.” Charm, it seems, is moving past acknowledgment and transitioning into action. As shown, Clairo spends a lot of the album fighting both her head and her heart, slowly coaxing herself out of her wooded isolation but then retreating back in just as fast, afraid of getting hurt for good.“ If you need to disappear / You’ll have no reason to be sad at all,” she sings on “Pier 4.” Sure, she can spare her emotions by never fully extending her hand out to someone. But then, she asks: “Where’s the fun in that?”

There isn’t any (and no point for there to be), she realizes in the shimmery single, “Sexy to Someone.” Connection is “just a little thing [she] can’t live without.” Being charmed, risking pain for love—whether romantic or platonic—is what matters to her most: It keeps you alive and gives you a “reason to get out of the house.” Self-described as her “second debut,” Charm is Clairo’s finest work to date. Maybe she didn’t like Sling as much as I certainly did, or perhaps she thinks of it as an EP version of Charm—like Diary 001 was to Immunity. I don’t know. What I do know is this: Clairo is back and as charming as ever. Do yourself a favor and listen.

Sam Small is a freelance writer of sorts & shorts based in Brooklyn, NY. She has written for NME, Consequence of Sound, Clash Magazine and Under The Radar.