With her newest record, Clairo disentangles her previous sounds to challenge her domesticity, that, after all, she’s just someone whose hands will wander, and wants someone to wander her, too.
It is devastatingly publicized in the online landscapes the quote that goes with the lines of wanting to disappear but silently rather loves to be found. As dramatically repetitive this line that it could be paraphrased in whispers left from these people’s virtual mouths, it is a human nature to ask for attention, even if there’s no words that were able to come out of it. What’s the purpose of the skin if not by the powers of yearning towards someone’s hands?
In her third album, Claire Cottrill is able to wander the narrative of the most innate trait a human has ever been—nomadic. People tend to forget that these houses we’ve been residing since birth were just cover-ups due to anthropological developments written (or forgot to be written) in the books of history, but long before the world began, we were just built with feet to walk to the unknown, and just constantly looking for something, although we don’t have the ability to identify that something.
As the world is ever-morphing, it, unfortunately, heavily disrupts the uninhabited nature of men as everyone leans now on still life. Clairo doesn’t. With confidence, she belongs to the wild. “I’m touch-starved and shameless,” she sings in the first track, Nomad. It was a declaration, deviating herself from her shy, introverted nature in comparison to her records prior. Framed with soft-rock progressions and some subtle jazz tones to compensate with the balance of her previous records—the amplified Immunity and compressed Sling, her skin is definitely meant outside these four-walled corners.
See? Even domesticity disagrees with her.
The first single, Sexy To Someone, despite the subtlety, Clairo unleashed the beast in her with such craving to be seen and desired. It could be in the sense of being fleshly worshipped because at times, there is ambiguity in the middle of the lines, but it has to be said because her body is reacting to a certain stimuli.
Throughout the record, Cottrill may maintain her usual minimal soundscapes, which is already part of her charm as a beloved indie pop singer-songwriter-slash-star; however, every record she has released has been quite heightened, and there’s a sense of maturity that was shown especially in this record that Juna could even feel like a sequel to Bags, one of her singles off Immunity, if the storyline of Bags would progress. Additionally, her still waters have come to run with so much depth, and that, even in the wildest moments, one can still attain such peace, which was basically sprung on the laid-back Terrapin.
Clairo’s songwriting may not necessarily evolve if we’re talking about face value, but everything in her did. It is as if her melodies were heavy, her words, heavier, and her soul, unbearable to carry, and that is a sign of a songwriter.
Listen to Clairo’s new record here.
Jett interestingly seeks every supposed-to-be-life-changing almost: getting a Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education, submitting a finished compilation of epistles and poems to some book publications, and releasing passion projects to audio streaming platforms. However, his inkling of his pen and his reverberating of his music, being the ones that keep him sustained in somehows, never stop him from walking to a road yet to be taken.
