Little changes lyrics clairo7/30/2023 ![]() Clairo throws her croon to the left speaker as weirdly windy and cold keyboards bring together a sort-of ambiguously melancholic soundstage. But, I didn’t know any of this on my first listen. Couple this reverently relevant voice with flawless production in a timeless ilk, and it’s obvious how Sling has become one of my favourite things to exist. It’s the spirit of Sling, it’s youthfulness and dread and dreaming and longing, that resonated with my 20-year-old self. Needless to say, it soundtracked the rest of the Summer, being my morning music on the bike ride to my café job, it somehow inserted itself into my walk to campus, supervising study sessions and inviting itself to every cup of tea I shared with a friend. Sling, on the other hand, found a way to attach itself so relentlessly to pretty much every month of the first year of my twenties. It’s an endearing effort, clumsy in places and overflowing with intention and experience. For context, this wasn’t my first time listening to Clairo, having the pleasures and woes of my seventeenth year as a human soundtracked by her debut, Immunity. I planted myself directly between the two speakers, angling them subtly to form a perfect stereo field, (it’s the little things). ![]() In this case, I was in my teen bedroom in my parents’ house, midsummer sun streaming through the well-worn window, spent after dozens of attempts climbing onto the roof. I usually like to find a peaceful spot, maybe a bedroom or cozy corner or a bright place outdoors. The first listen is a sacred thing, and so I treat it as such. These tracks point to Clairo’s potential – but ultimately make you wish the rest of the album had a bit more of their emotional depth.I will probably never forget the first time I listened to Clairo’s Sling. ‘Harbor’ captures some of that same gentle intensity, as do closing tracks ‘Little Changes’ and ‘Management’. Recent single ‘Blouse’, for example, which takes on sexist men in the music industry, glimmers with a quiet rage, with intricately layered strings and backing vocals from Lorde giving weight to Cottrill’s airy vocals. ![]() The album’s best moments are as ambitious as anything Antonoff has worked on, but gorgeously understated in a way that feels unique to Clairo. Cottrill’s lyrics are as tender and earnest as ever, and on the whole, Sling’s ornate arrangements complement this, though at times the theatricality of the production seems to overwhelm their simplicity. Which makes sense, in a way – this is an album about settling down, learning to take care of yourself, and letting go of that which doesn’t serve. It’s hard not to feel that something is lost in this cleanup, some of the naivety and playfulness which made those earlier tracks so endearing. ![]() Sling sees Clairo refine her sound even more – Antonoff isn’t known for his rough edges after all. Her first album Immunity, produced by Rostam Batmanglij, built on this lo-fi sound, elevating it without losing its charm. When she emerged in 2017, Clairo (real name Claire Cottrill) quickly became a poster girl for the type of lo-fi indie-pop that had until then existed mostly on the fringes of the mainstream, and played no small part in its crossover, with songs like ‘Flamin’ Hot Cheetos’ and ‘Pretty Girl’ nimbly bridging the gap between Pitchfork and Teen Vogue readers, not to mention her ever growing social media following. With her second LP Sling, Clairo has enlisted Jack Antonoff as a co-producer, presumably in the hope he could do for her what he’s done for Lorde, Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey – i.e.
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