Clairo
3Olympia
★★★★☆
Conversation pits – the sunken living areas popularised in the 1970s – are given new life in the stage design for Clairo’s Charm tour.
When her band emerges around 9pm, all shabby chic, they sit on the pit’s lower tier. They nurse indistinguishable cans of liquid and raise them to the crowd while Wendy Rene’s After Laughter (Comes Tears) from 1964 rings out across the Olympia speakers.
The suggestion is we are about to travel back in time, and for much of the 90-minute set that follows, we do. Clairo, the moniker for American singer-songwriter Claire Cottrill, has been the gold standard for bedroom pop for close to a decade. She was 13 when she began recording webcam covers for YouTube and not much older than that when Pretty Girl, a 2017 lo-fi original, blew up and kick-started her career.
Cottrill had to overcome early allegations that she was an industry plant, after a Reddit user-driven investigation revealed her father, who now serves as the chief marketing officer for Topgolf, held helpful ties to the music industry. The best way to escape those critiques, it transpires, is to prove yourself as a prolific, ambitious songwriter.
Clairo at 3Olympia: Whispery vocals and piano licks make a seamless transition from bedroom to jazz club
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The Charm tour takes its name from Clairo’s third studio album, which arrived last November. A collaboration with decorated soul and jazz producer Leon Michels, the LP was a step into ornate, 70s soft rock and cabaret that Cottrill now fully embraces on stage. Spearheading her backing band in a black dress, grasping a microphone and strolling confidently, this is a seamless transition from bedroom to jazz club.
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Cottrill’s hushed, whispery vocal style has always been at the centre of her sound. It lends itself to headphone-wearing, bedroom pop obsessives but in a live setting, that sort of delivery could feel too delicate. Here, it is right at home.
Every song from the album has a slot on the set list. The stage is a sea of midi keyboards, facilitating the piano licks and arpeggios that wash over Cottrill’s vocals throughout. It is particularly velvety and transfixing on songs such as Thank You and Add Up My Love – sharp and considered, too, in their rhythm sections, which is often an element of Clairo’s sound that separates her from contemporaries.
Occasional bursts of nostalgia keep things varied. Softly and North, both relatively early in the set, are welcome nods to 2019’s Immunity. A blend of Harbor and Pier 4 provokes the audience and tees up the last batch of songs. In good voice all night, they erupt for Bags, Sexy to Someone and Juna, and to close things out, the piano is swapped for guitar power chords and thick, indie pop lead lines on Sofia – clearly the pinnacle of the show for many.
If there can be a complaint made about the performance, it is that portions of it were tough to see. Maybe diving beyond the jazz club aesthetic, several songs were played with the stage in almost total darkness before the issue was raised by people in the front row. Well lit or not, though, Clairo’s development as an artist is clear.
