At Pasadena’s Re:SET Concert Series in the summer of 2023, an effortlessly cool Clairo said in between hits of her vape: “this is the last time we’re going to be performing for a while” to a sea of gasps. Her sophomore record Sling, released in July 2021, embraced a stripped–down, lyric–driven version of her art, which laid a gracious backdrop to grapple with heavy topics like objectification, depression, and motherhood. She cloistered herself, and, with Jack Antonoff, made a faint yet enduring dent in the COVID–19 pandemic–indie canon.
Three years later, in her third record, Charm, the lyrical strengths of Sling re–emerge, melding with the spiritedness and experimentation of Immunity, Clairo’s debut album. Enter: Leon Michels. El Michels Affair, the producer’s funk–Afrobeat–hip–hop instrumental group, brings the slinky ‘70s jazz–infused sound to Charm. A full accompanying band featuring the flute, saxophone, bongo drums, organ, and more is the ornamental flair that flits around Clairo’s hushed voice.
Charm is driven by aesthetics. Clairo constructs a palpable conversation pit; soft glances exchanged with strangers on public transit; singed red cheeks from a sunburn, a glass of wine, or slight embarrassment. The singer’s inspirations for the album include “the silliness of Harry Nilsson,” and “the vocals of Margo Guryan and Blossom Dearie” with elements of Carole King and Andy Shauf woven throughout. Taken together, the atmosphere is as light as her voice but dense with tender albeit shameless yearning.
“Nomad,” the album’s opener, strikes the balance between elevated production and intimate lyrics. The singer admits she’s both “cynical” and “touch–starved,” risking friendship and a familiar home for a feeling similar to love, perhaps limerence. Speaking of a lover who won’t give their all, she confides to those who will listen of her desperation: “But I’d rather be alone than a stranger / You’d come visit me late at night.”
Grasping at the intrigue of attraction and, on its flip side, attention is a common theme explored by the artist. The lead single “Sexy to Someone” is an upbeat but pining cry to be desired, even if it’s a one–off second of a stranger’s interest. A music video where Clairo twirls around her bedroom in a silky nightgown, singing into a hairbrush is apropos à la the chorus: “Sexy to somebody, it would help me out / Oh, I need a reason to get out of the house.”
One thing is for sure: Clairo’s having fun. “Second Nature” features a swinging melody with cocktail–party–effect giggling in the background and a slowed–tempo bridge. Vocalizations like humming and soft scatting act as her own instruments amid slide guitar, mellotron, and Wurlitzer throughout the album.
Through Charm, the singer speaks to multiple people in multiple stages of her life all at once. In “Thank You,” Clairo retrospectively admits gratitude for a past relationship that was incompatible. It quickly goes from a sweet to sultry melody, which the Clairo–Michels duo does right. Fan favorite “Juna” features one of the best verses of the album: “(You make me wanna) Go dancing / (You make me wanna) Try on feminine / (You make me wanna) Go buy a new dress / (You make me wanna) Slip off a new dress.” It’s the kind of closeness that can’t be expressed better than simple, no–frills lyrics.
For most of the album, Clairo’s delicate vocals toe the line of being overpowered by Michels’ production. But they strike a balance, and the two are married in a seamless back–and–forth of easy listening for the new millennium. The meditative and sparse ninth track, “Echo” acts as the interlude. In her slower–tempo songs, Clairo sounds most candid, like in “Slow Dance” or “Pier 4,” the latter being the melancholic end to the record. “What’s the cost of it, being loved? / When close is not close enough?” she asks. Rhetorical questions are oft used by the singer in her discography. The crux of the young singer–songwriter’s music is making sense of her life, which she finds to be dictated by external forces. But we catch a glimmer, like in “Terrapin,” of a content Clairo, who shares her fondness for the quiet life.
It’s in these little moments that Clairo offers her most authentic self to listeners. The magnetism of Charm is the singer’s tried–and–true practice of verbalizing her inner thoughts through forthright lyrics. For such art that ages better with time, it isn’t luck—it’s classic Clairo.
