Charm by Clairo // Album Review
Third time's a charm! The beauty of Clairo's Charm truly lies in it's simplicity and subtleties of her artistry. This album is made up of simple musings that are so inherently personal and deeply relatable at the same time. She has such a talent for storytelling in a way that is innately modern, yet very rooted in pop aesthetics of the 1970's. Each song is so layered, with a warm and inviting atmosphere that the listener is engulfed in from the start. She and her core collaborator on this album, producer Leon Michaels, took an analog approach to the creation of Charm, bringing together a live ensemble of horns, woodwinds and synthesizers to capture the vintage sound. In an increasingly digital music landscape, I love to see her going back to basics in that way and creating something completely away from the trends. Clairo draws from a range of influences, but I particularly love the jazz elements incorporated throughout. "This record was a lot about showcasing my taste more and putting that forward, and showing my audience what I listen to," she told Rolling Stone. She is one of the few artists who could pull off making an album like this, her unique artistic vision and soulful approach to music is so rare and something she continues to pull off so well.
"This is my third album, and people know me a little bit better, but fuck, they still don't know," Clairo told Rolling Stone. "It takes so many records to really understand someone's choices." Most of the songs on Charm started off as an initial feeling, then trying to work out the production before the lyrics. Lyrically this album is introspective but also don't take itself too seriously at the same time. She writes with a sense of yearning laced throughout Charm, knowingly diving into each song before she fully understands the feelings she's having or having the complete story to tell. It goes between silly and serious, sweet to sensual - it's kind of everything all at once. Charm is "...a mixture of sweet and sexy and strong and soft and feminine and masculine," she told Vulture.
While there isn't necessarily much sonic variety from song to song, as a body of work it tells such a beautiful and intimate story from beginning to end. This album as a whole really is so charming and entrancing to listen to. "I had this notebook full of notes about what that word meant to me, what I could do with that word, what lives in that word," she told The New Yorker of choosing the album's title. "I came to the conclusion that, to me, charm is the moment when two people meet, and they have separate life experiences, all their own stories and feelings, and then they tell each other the first layer. ‘I’m from blank, and I do blank.’ There’s this beautiful haze and buzz when you’re still imagining the rest of it. That feeling is so good." With Charm, she sets out to tell such a beautiful story of the complexities of love, relationships and self-discovery. It is very chill and calming to listen to, with her soft, whispered vocals at the forefront of every song. I find myself listening to the album all the way through over and over, it is so gorgeous from beginning to end. Charm is among Clairo's strongest work yet, following up the equally gorgeous Sling in 2021. To me, Sling sounds like a cold winter day, while Charm feels like warm summer nights right before the transition into fall. One of her biggest strengths as an artist is being able to create these sonic landscapes that fully capture very specific feelings that I never heard translated into music in such a way before.
In the opening track, "Nomad", she considers leaving it all for a life of solitude instead of continuing to force connections with someone. In the first verse, Clairo sings, "I’d run the risk of losing everything, sell all my things, become nomadic, I’d run the risk, and just in case I might, sell all my things and become the night". In an interview with Rolling Stone, she called "Nomad" the "bridge between Sling and Charm".
The second track, "Sexy To Someone" is undoubtedly the best song she ever made. It's about wanting to be wanted by someone - even if it's just a fleeting moment of validation - just to experience what that feeling is like in moments of loneliness. "Sexy to someone, I think about it all, checkin' out of the hotel or moments at a bar, ask if I'm in a movie, no, I didn't get the part", she sings in the first verse. "It's just one of those funny things. No one really wants to ask for external validation," she told Rolling Stone. "It's like asking for someone to get you flowers. You don't want to ask people to compliment you. You just want the little dose of 'Well, that was really nice. I wasn’t expecting that!'" It's a topic that is very unique and something I don't often hear explored in music, but it is also so relatable in ways I never thought of before. "Sexy To Someone" just sounds so dreamy and has a lot of subtle tongue-in-cheek moments lyrically, which is a recurring element throughout Charm.
The track list sequencing of this record really does tell such vulnerable story of love and loss and everything that she gained from being able to feel that much. "Second Nature" is a sweet and simple song that describes the feeling of true love so beautifully. She sings of the feeling of being pulled toward someone so strongly that they are able to completely disrupt your whole life and every thought. It almost feels like fate or like all of the stars aligned to get to that moment. The following song, "Slow Dance", shows a different end of that relationship as the metaphorical candle of their relationship is burning out. On "Second Nature", she was so certain that this was true love, but now there is more uncertainty as the relationship is nearing it's end. Following "Slow Dance", she finds me more clarity in hindsight on "Thank You". She is now more thankful for all of the ways her life became better for knowing that person and is thankful to have even loved them as much as she did. She sings, "Sometimes I wonder if you were the one, when you opened the door, cracked me wide open, somethin' about it doesn't sit right with me".
Another shining moment on Charm is the stunning "Juna". Clairo sings about meeting someone new that she has such a strong connection to it almost feels instinctual. "I don't even try, I don't have to think, with you, there's no pretending," she sings, "you know me, you know me, and I just might know you too". This song is so gorgeous and so romantic, with simplistic, twinkling production. Her mouth trumpet is also such a fun addition to the song too!
"Add Up My Love" follows, which is another one of my favorites from the album. The chords are also nearly the exact same as "Sexy To Someone", which is quite symbolic actually. This song is a declaration of love, finally ready to fully give herself to someone, but the other person can't reciprocate it back for her. "Honey, was it enough? Is it ever enough?" she sings in the chorus. All that's left now are the shadows of everything that they could have been together if it worked out. "I remember when I see the moon" is such a vivid description of that fleeting love that is now gone.
"That one was super fun to make, also kind of infuriating at times," Clairo said in an interview with Rolling Stone. "I was struggling with the sounds and how to make it weird enough. That’s probably the one I had the hardest time with, because it’s so openly pop that I was afraid it was going to skew the album a little bit pop. But then I made 'Echo,' so it was like, 'Let’s put them next to each other.' Two completely opposite songs, weirdly next to each other on the album."
Her vocal performance and specific delivery of some of the lyrics is a big part of what makes this album as special as it is. The production throughout Charm also has a lot of weird and unexpected elements, which I say in the best way possible. "Echo" is probably the best example of those quirky, creative choices she went with for the overall sound of the album, which were all executed so beautifully. It really is unlike anything else on the album, the pacing and instrumental is so different than any other song Clairo has made before. It is such a big highlight of the record for me. I especially love the lyric, "our love is meant to be shared, while our love goes nowhere". Again, this song details a one-sided relationship she's in, with the other side being vapid and secretive.
"Glory of the Snow" seems to narratively take place after that relationship ended, but focusing on the mundane moments of her still trying to process what happened. "I pull on the string that binds me to memories of the way I loved you," she sings, "I push on the door, the one I've ignored, the one that leads me to you".
"'Glory of the Snow' is a plant that I saw at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that, once I read about it, I knew there was something really beautiful," she said in an interview with Rolling Stone, recalling the inspiration behind the song. "It's one of the first plants that sprouts at the beginning of spring, so you can see them sprouting through snow. The fact it’s called Glory of the Snow, it's just something that struck me." She added that the song is "about picking yourself back up and reframing the situation and doing the hard stuff to get through something and seeing it on the other end."
The level of sincerity and honesty in her words really is so moving to listen to, Charm takes the listener on such an emotional journey as she details the beginning and end of this relationship. The album ends with the melancholic "Pier 4", a song that describes her sitting at the pier and going through all of her memories of this relationship and where it all went wrong. When the issue is simultaneously "close is not close enough" and "close being just too much" - where does one go from there? She also questions "What's the cost of being in love?" It's a really beautiful song, and so thought provoking.
"I think that song being the last one was a cool moment: 'Nomad' starts the album, and it’s this yearning song full of desire," she told Rolling Stone. "And then 'Pier 4' is at the end of the dating process, after you’ve yearned for someone and it didn’t work out. It's a cyclical thing. If you listen to the record over and over again, you're experiencing one whole pocket of dating someone. The bookends tell you what happened."
Charm creates such an intricate tapestry of emotions and is such a beautifully introspective body of work. I find myself listening to this album on repeat over and over because there is something so calming about it that makes it easy to get so engrossed in the universe Clairo creates with this album. Charm really does speak for itself, the sincere and honest approach she has with this music is something that not many can compare to.
Thanks for reading! I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below!
Photo Credit: Clairo, CJ Harvey
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