Clairo - Charm (LP) - Yellow, Light Blue & Purple Striped Vinyl

Charm lands like a warm breeze off the river, the kind of record that makes you linger on the walk home so a song can finish before the front gate clicks shut. Clairo’s third album arrived 12 July 2024, and the shift is clear the moment the needle drops. Where Sling favoured hushed folk textures, this one leans into a velvety 70s soul palette, guided by producer and multi-instrumentalist Leon Michels of El Michels Affair. You can hear his fingerprints in the woodwinds, the unhurried rhythm sections, and that brushed, analogue sheen that makes everything feel played in a room rather than engineered on a screen.

Lead single Sexy to Someone set the tone months ahead, a featherlight groove with a bassline that nudges rather than pushes and vocals that float just above the cymbals. It is flirtatious but unshowy, almost sly. Nomad extends the mood with a slightly duskier sway, letting the horns and keyboards colour the edges while Clairo threads the melody with an easy, conversational phrasing. She has always had an instinct for understatement, and Michels builds a world where her restraint becomes the headline. The arrangements bloom around her rather than ask her to belt through them.

That partnership is the story here. Michels has spent years steeped in classic soul and cinematic library sounds, and he brings that experience to Charm without turning it into retro cosplay. The drums sit soft and deep in the pocket, the guitars are clean and slightly sandy, flutes and clarinets glide in and out like little gusts of air. It feels tactile, as if you can see the players exchanging looks across a small live room. The songs benefit from that intimacy. There is room for Clairo to let her vowels hang, to drop a line to a whisper, to tuck a harmony where you only catch it on the third listen.

Lyrically, she stays close to the small stuff that ends up mattering most. Misread glances, private jokes gone stale, the ways you hold yourself back without noticing. She sketches these scenes without fuss, and the band colours them in. On one track, a Rhodes figure curls under a line about a conversation that never quite lands. On another, a muted trumpet adds a bittersweet lift to the chorus, like a smile you fake well enough to fool yourself for a second. Nothing here clangs for attention, but details keep accumulating until you realise the record has quietly wrapped around your day.

If you came in through Immunity or Sling, the progression feels natural. The songwriting DNA is the same, still tuned to everyday intimacy, but the setting is sunnier. There is a confidence in letting a groove sit at an unfashionable tempo, in trusting an airy flute to carry a hook, in favouring a human take over a perfect one. That makes Charm a pleasure on speakers and even better on wax. The analog tilt of these sessions blossoms on Clairo vinyl. Spin the Charm vinyl and you catch the breath in the room, the gentle tape saturation on the cymbals, the way the bass hugs the floor without swallowing it. It is a record that rewards volume, but it also suits a late kitchen clean-up with the windows cracked.

Collectors will clock how neatly this sits beside other Clairo albums on vinyl. You can put on a side of Sling, then cue this and hear how the arrangements have widened while the songwriting stayed clear and close. If you like digging in person, it is the sort of LP you might see propped at the counter of a Melbourne record store with a handwritten staff note: soft-soul summer keeper. And if you prefer to buy Clairo records online, it is an easy add-to-cart for anyone building a shelf that leans toward mellower weekend listening. For those browsing vinyl records Australia, this is a dead-set crowd-pleaser that still feels personal.

What lingers is how unforced it all is. No big swings at radio moments. No flashy guests to distract. Just a singer who knows her lane and a bandleader who knows how to frame her. Charm is the most comfortable Clairo has sounded, and that comfort gives it staying power. Months from now, a track from this will drift out of an apartment on a warm night and you will recognise it not from a hook you cannot shake, but from its easy gait and the way it makes the room feel a size larger. That’s a rare trick, and this album has it.