Album Review: “Charm” by Clairo

Clairo’s third album “Charm” is straight whimsy, driven by hooky piano, expert bass lines, and flute-accented grooves that are embellished by smooth vocal melodies, breezing through seemingly absent-minded lyrics that reveal a conscientious inner monologue.

For those who got into Clairo off of the “diary 001” EP in the heyday of the late-2010s indie moment, such as myself, it often feels like the Clairo of “Flaming Hot Cheetos” and “Pretty Girl” we once knew is long gone. Put next to each other, her debut EP followed by “Immunity,” “Sling,” and “Charm” does make chronological sense, but each release has brought something so new to our understanding of Claire Cotrill as both a person and an artist that it feels like you get to discover her all over again with every new work. But if you listen closely, you find that though Cotrill may have moved on from a lot of her initial quirks, she’s still reaching for the same soft spots that glued so many listeners to her music in the first place. A knack for pop hooks sewn into a vintage sensibility, underscored by a covert bass jam and the occasional clever sonic accent, has always had just as much a place in her work as her trademark easy prose, even if the full band arrangements and whispery vocal harmonies feel newer. “Slow Dance” and “Juna” and even reach for some electronic effects that you’d expect to find on “Immunity,” if not something of her’s made prior to that. The result is an album that doesn’t feel like the next in a line of musical try-on-a-thons, but an evolution in the truest sense. Two months into its release, you start to wonder why Contrill didn’t wait longer to show her latest collection to the world– with its warm tones (both visually and sonically) as well as its timeless themes and sounds, “Charm” makes the use of the word “autumn” feel contextually appropriate.

Favorite Song: “Add Up My Love”

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