Like many music listeners who learn the name ‘Clairo’, my entry point into her music was inevitably through the single ‘Pretty Girl’ which happened to pop up whilst I let music videos cycle through on Youtube. At first, the tens of millions of views seem to be at odds with the fairly low budget audio quality and video, but do not underestimate the catchiness of the hook, which will cause frequent ear worms for many weeks. It’s a good track; fun and light on the ear, yet the subject matter deals with how Clairo struggled to fulfil the oppressive expectations of a previous partner and how her love for them clouded her perspective of what was clearly an unhealthy relationship. I fell hook, line, and sinker for Clairo’s early tracks and the bedroom pop niche that she co-pioneered with other artists such as Gus Dapperton and Still Woozy. However, her debut album ‘Immunity’ dropped this association to her musical origins and moved toward a more mature sound, and my god did it pay off.
‘Immunity’ begins with the delicate piano strokes of track 1: ‘Alewife’, setting the tone perfectly for what is to follow for the listener. As the track progresses, further instrumentation kicks in and Clairo begins her recollection of when she nearly took her own life in the eighth grade, expressing her gratitude to her friend who stopped her from doing so. This is a bold move for a first track on a debut album, but it immediately denotes that Clairo is not afraid of embracing her emotions and, as the listener, it carries the assumption that this album will be exploring all the ins and outs of the artist’s psyche, allowing us unique insight into her life. The track is well handled and intensely intimate, but the building drums as the song continues have an air of growth and optimism that connote Clairo’s moving on from this dark place, expertly leading into the next track: ‘Impossible’.
The second track has a more upbeat tempo, yet slows down for the chorus as Clairo reflects on a past relationship and resists the temptation of returning to that relationship. Clairo herself has said that this song shows her “growing” and it is evident come the final seconds as ‘Impossible’ fades out with laughter and light tones. Track 3 titled ‘Closer To You’ is the moodiest of the first three songs, and the artist experiments with autotune for the first time in the record in conjunction with punchier phrases like “shut up” and “fucked up”. On twitter, Clairo has explained that the use of vocal effects in the track represents a wall she has to break through and the parts of the song which do not use the effects are a deliberate call to the subject of the track at this particular moment, as if she faces a constant battle to maintain extended communication with them. It is one of many points within the album that gives the listener an extended subconscious insight into Claire Cottrill as a person and not just Clairo who broke through with a webcam in her bedroom. Very few artists are willing to do what Claire is doing in ‘Immunity’ and the warm, melodic tunes that surround her poetry on the tracks serve as the perfect catalyst for the listener’s thoughts to become harmonious with hers.
Now that the listener has arrived at the middle section of the 40 minute run time that makes up ‘Immunity’, a flurry of tracks arrives that, personally, I deem to be some of the best moments of 2019’s musical catalogue. ‘North’ is track 4 and carries real hit-power, with its blissful choruses and Clairo’s dreamily soft singing articulating her conflict with fleeting romances and the obligatory raising of her guard that comes with tour-life intimacy. It marks a moment in the album where Clairo has continued to grow from the past experiences she has previously informed the listener of and how those experiences have impacted her mental state and her handling of new situations that arise. In this sense, ‘Immunity’ has a somewhat bildungsroman feel to it, with the artist feeding off of her past to become the person she is today.
I wanted to dedicate a whole paragraph to the following track as it is by far my favourite Clairo song and the one that says to me that Claire Cottrill is destined for greatness. ‘Bags’ is the soul crushingly heart-warming emotional joyride that inevitably ends in the oh-so familiar failure to break through to someone you love. In the track, Clairo, in a frustrated manner, emphasises the importance that every single second has when she spends time with the subject of this song, and how she will engage in meaningless activity like watching TV just to be close to this person who has not revealed any hints regarding their feelings for her. There’s an eager tension that permeates throughout this song, and as the chorus reveals with the line “I guess this could be worse/ walking out the door with yours bags”, Clairo has herself envisaging worst case scenarios in a nearly-hopeless attempt to appease her emotions. The instrumentation appears to be echoing this action too, with the song embracing what Genius describes as “soft guitar, wavy synths, and twinkling piano”, and the chord progression around the 2 minute, 20 second mark carries a determined pace that can be seen as an attempt to escalate the emotion of Clairo’s scenario, yet ultimately fails as we return to the enchanted meandering of the piano which runs parallel with the awkward comfort of self-assurance, even when emotions are not reciprocated. It is around here that Clairo sings the line “But what’s the rush? Kissing, then my cheeks are so flushed” which I think is a beautifully fragile way of exploring the tender familiarity of another’s company. ‘Bags’ is a delightful listen and establishes Clairo as an extremely talented, yet underrated, songwriter who, despite her success and global recognition, is only getting started.
From there, Clairo takes us into the tracks ‘Softly’ and ‘Sofia’, with the pair carrying a sense of optimism and defiance that is particularly poignant, especially with Clairo’s coming out as bisexual in March 2018. The two tracks directly address her bisexuality, with ‘Softly’ alluding to a ‘go with the flow’ mentality in regards to attraction, and the outro of the track has the declaration “I don’t care what they say/ Care what they say to me, I’m doing it differently”. Bridging into ‘Sofia’, Clairo continues in this fashion, referring to a character called ‘Sofia’ with whom she feels a strong bond with, strong enough to defy the social convention of the society in which she exists. The two tracks are empowering and accepting and, considering where we started all the way back at ‘Alewife’, it is evident that Clairo has taken us by the hand and walked us through her life, instilling a sense of pride within the listener that only an album of this capacity is capable of doing.
‘Immunity’ concludes with four tracks, three of which I will discuss together as, sonically, these are not dissimilar. ‘White Flag’, ‘Feel Something’, and ‘Sinking’ explore the healing process after failed relationships, the absence of emotion, and the rheumatoid arthritis that the singer has struggled with since age 17. In these songs, we learn that Clairo has no time for hostility with past lovers, instead choosing to appreciate the good that they brought to her life and not wanting to unnecessarily end friendships, even when the romance has gone. Additionally, we get the other end of the spectrum in the appropriately named ‘Feel Something’, where romantic connections are extinguished and replaced immediately with the moving on process that Clairo has experienced in her life. Somewhat unrelated from its subject matter, this song contains a certain guitar twang that has a Pink Floyd ‘Wish You Were Here’ vibe to it which enhances the sense of nostalgia that has been an ongoing theme of this album. ‘Sinking’ quietly refers to Clairo’s health issues and how they can be numbed when in a state of infatuation however, heart-wrenchingly, the artist holds an interior battle as to whether she is to blame for the pain she is in and the self-loathing that is within all of us at times just manages to reveal its shadowy figure beneath the surface, but Clairo does not let it win, instead drifting out of the song with melodic humming.
‘I Wouldn’t Ask You’ rounds of the track listing and is a 7-minute epic consisting of two parts, with the help of young singers for backing vocals at times, creating an atmosphere of delicate innocence. Again, the song refers to a time in her life when rheumatoid arthritis left her hospitalised and how her then boyfriend was left to care for her. The track is split between two different musical tones, with the first half being slow, hymnal, and intimate, and the second half characterised by a glittering instrumentation accompanied by Clairo’s emotionally fuelled vocals on top of the returning child backing singers. The presence of the children connotes the rawness of emotion at that age and how things are simplified, yet that does not mean that they are any less strong than the emotions we have as adults. This is an idea that has its roots in William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ published in the 18th century, which details many of the same notions. Overall, it is an ideal closer to an album that specifically deals in the fragility of the self and the incoherency of the head and the heart. At just 21 years old, Clairo demonstrates a sophisticated approach to understanding herself and we as listeners can vicariously achieve this self-acceptance through her music. The music is flawed at times, as pointed out by Anthony Fantano’s review for theneedledrop, but I think this adds to the beauty of the record. It is about acknowledging these flaws and learning that perfection does not exist, and, ultimately, growing from our experiences.
The Turntable 