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.
