It’s around 4 p.m. when Claire Cottrill, known professionally as Clairo, strolls into Webster Hall for soundcheck.
Outside, on East 11th Street, fans are wrapped around the block, eagerly waiting to secure their spot in the standing-room-only venue. It’s been a busy summer for Cottrill, whose third album, Charm , came out in July and quickly went viral online. (Surely you’ve heard the fizzy, yearning “Sexy to Someone” ?) Three shows into her five-night residency in New York, she chats through notes from the previous day’s performance with her band onstage.
Then, after running through “Juna,” “Thank You,” and “Echo, ” Cottrill meets me in her dressing room. She cracks open a package of Cafe Bustelo, her preferred brand of coffee, and offers me a cup while we talk. “The whole point of having short-term residencies in LA and New York was so that we’d have, like, 10 shows under our belt before we embark on a tour in the rest of the country and the world.
Having that practice and language built amongst the band is important,” Cottrill says, reflecting on her first headlining shows in nearly two years. Still, the crowds both in New York and Los Angeles, where she played five nights at the Fonda Theatre near the start of the month, came prepared: “It’s definitely wild to hear people singing the words back to me,” she says. “It’s always been a wild phenomenon for me.
” Cottrill picked both residency venues for their sound quality, which she could remember from attending shows there herself in years past. “Going to see live music was such a big part of my growing up,” she says. “What more could I want than to be supplying an experience like that for teenagers? It’s so sweet.
” While Charm has been charming Clairo fans for months now, its groovy sound freely borrowing from jazz, soul, and psychedelic folk, Cottrill has been living with the album for the better part of a year since recording it in her upstate New York home with co-producer Leon Michels. “I go into recording knowing what I put out might not be everybody’s favorite album, but I think as long as I feel like I’m progressing and moving my own personal needle, then it’s worth putting out,” she says. Charm has arrived at a formative time in the musician’s life: her mid-20s.
How have they treated her so far? “I figured out how to do winged eyeliner,” Cottrill tells me, proudly. “Mastering that has been maybe one of the greatest parts of being 26.” Yet she’s become more comfortable in other areas of her life, too: “I was just talking to a friend about this last night.
I’m a pretty introverted person, and I’ve always been introverted onstage, and weirdly, this album kind of allows the person I am to thrive,” she says. “I feel weirdly more confident than I have, just because of how the show compliments my personality. I feel that I can thrive in the fact that I’m introverted and actually have a good time.
” Out on the road, she is most excited about applying the softly shimmering sound of the current record to her older songs—or, as she calls it, “charmifying” them. “No song is ever safe from me doing this to it!” she says. “It’s exciting to reimagine your own work and give it another set of wings for however long.
” Later that night, fans pack the iconic New York music hall from wall to wall, ecstatic to see their favorite artist in such an intimate setting. After an opening-slot performance by Frankie Cosmos, the audience roars with joy at the sound of Wendy Rene’s “After Laughter (Comes Tears),” the introduction to Cottrill’s set. When she emerges a few minutes after 9 p.
m., she’s traded in the beige cableknit sweater, straight-leg jeans, and combat boots I found her in backstage for a light blue draped dress and brown knee-high boots. She takes fans through every track on Charm , also weaving in new renditions of “Sinking,” from her debut album, Immunity (a recent addition to the show), and “How” from her first EP.
Cottrill delicately sways as she sings, her voice breathy and sweet. Twenty-one songs later, she has completed her fourth night at Webster Hall, and is keenly looking ahead to her grand finale in New York before the start of her North American tour in Dallas on September 27. While on the road, she plans to spend her spare time reading; she’ll have a nightlight and a trusty heating pad with her on the bus.
Perhaps it’s just the calm before the storm, but I seem to be finding Cottrill at an especailly contented, grateful, even slightly wistful moment. “Being a realized version of yourself is really cool,” Cottrill says. “I think if I met the 15-year-old me, the girl who was chronically online in her bedroom—the younger me would probably think the adult me is so cool.
If you can think about that conversation between you and your past self, and you know that your younger self would be proud—then you’re on the path you’re supposed to be on.”.
