Formerly known as a bedroom pop star, Clairo – AKA Claire Cottrill – takes to the road on her lush, sunlit third album. Tactile and breezy, Charm makes good on the Laurel Canyon influences touted for Cottrill’s previous record, but where 2021’s Immunity was careful and contained, these new songs make a bid for freedom. Opener Nomad, with its wandering slide guitar, sets the scene for an album about desire and distance. “I’d run the risk of losing everything / sell all my things,” she bargains, voice soft, mulling over what it would take to cross paths again with a certain person.
Recorded to tape with co-producer Leon Michels (of the soul group El Michels Affair), Charm embodies retro warmth without cliche. The daydreamy, loungey Terrapin is spiked by prickly drum fills, while Echo is thick with organ for the album’s eeriest, most psychedelic moment. Juna, the R&B-adjacent centrepiece, is swooningly sexy as it finally, greedily closes the gap between Cottrill and her desires: “Come to me, ready,” she urges, with a giddiness mirrored by twinkling keys and heart-leaping vintage synths.
But closeness isn’t always fulfilling. “Was it ever enough?” she pouts on bright, soulful Add Up My Love, as flutes trill and cymbals sparkle. And by hushed finale Pier 4, there’s still a chasm where closeness could have been: fingers squeak on guitar strings as Clairo muses on emotional walls which remain unbreached. A new high-water mark for a deeply human songwriter, Charm balances introspection with gut feeling: sometimes it just feels good to run.
