What was happening before all *this*?
Clairo on making new music, thinking about the past, injecting difficulty into a fit, pan-searing Gucci loafers, playing flute for donkeys & more
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Clairo, a.k.a. Claire Cottrill, started making sweet & woozy synthed-out pop in her bedroom and uploading it to the internet when she was a teenager. In 2017 her song “Pretty Girl” went supernova: the track captured her easy hand with charming & cheeky lo-fi chunes, and her DIY video for it racked up 100 million views, helping to turn Clairo into a generational phenomenon at age 19.
On her debut album, Immunity, she put a little polish on her sound without sacrificing these offbeat earworms. And on album No. 2 Clairo switched her whole s**t up in an audaciously mellow move we respect: She got on her “old soul” flow and dug into ‘70s-inspired singer-songwriter sounds… getting more classic with it… more laidback with it… more ~tasty~ with it.
The anticipation’s been building for LP3 ever since, and there are hints that it might be coming before too long. She’s been teasing a drop on IG and, what’s more, Blackbird Spyplane may or may not have heard new music that may or may not have sounded extremely cozy, assuredly slow-stirred and even ~tastier~ than we were hoping. As we type this sentence, rare new Clairo melodies may or may not be wafting through the air of HQ, sanctifying the place like a d*mn Sonic Palo Santo Stick.
Possibly more impressive than any of that, Claire has also been known to wear cool clothes and look cool in them. So the other day I (Jonah) was stoked to chop it up with her about flambéeing Gucci loafers, wearing inconvenient garments to keep yourself sharp, fleeing NYC for the countryside, trying to enchant donkeys by playing flute for them, & more “unbeatable topics.”
Blackbird Spyplane: You’ve been on IG recently teasing an imminent drop. Please end the speculation: Is there new music coming?
Clairo: “Yes, I’ve been working on new music, and it’s coming sooner than later. I’m excited about it — I feel like I’m walking into my truest form.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Give people a clue about the vibes. I see an old electric keyboard behind you, and a bunch of Persian rugs, and that’s painting a picture…
Clairo: “Haha yes, that definitely gives you some of the vibe. The firewood behind me, too.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Speaking of rural matters like firewood, I wanted to ask you about donkeys. This is an extremely pro-donkey newsletter. We believe that all animals are earthly instantiations of G-d, but donkeys are probably a Top 5 instantiation. You posted a picture of yourself playing a flute for a donkey a few weeks back. What’s the story?
Clairo: “Do you know how much I love donkeys? Why do you love them?”
Blackbird Spyplane: I’ve liked their energy since I was a kid, but then I saw Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, about a farmgirl & her donkey. The movie is beautiful & sad, and it took things to another level for me. There’s been some great movie donkeys lately, too — Banshees of Inisherin had a real sweetie.
Clairo: “They’re extremely charming animals. They feel like friends, like a combination of dog and cat. So yeah, I was at someone’s house upstate, and they have a really big fenced-in area with two donkeys in it, so I hopped the fence with my flute. I wanted to see if it was one of those things, like, those women who play piccolo in the fields and all the cows come running, or she sings an old beautiful song and horses gravitate toward her. I wanted to be that so bad. But, for me anyway, the donkeys didn’t care. It was an awkward experience — they didn’t give me anything. But that made me love them more, like I had to earn their trust.”
Blackbird Spyplane: A couple years ago you moved from Brooklyn to 5 acres of countryside somewhere between the Berkshires and Catskills. Tell us something about country living that someone who’s reading this surrounded by concrete will hear and decide to change their lives.
Clairo: “One of my qualms with New York is I can’t see the horizon, and I feel that’s deeply inhumane — it’s really cool to be able to walk outside and just see everything. Of course the amount of quiet is incredible, and you pay attention to the sunrise and sunset, and the stars are so clear at night, it’s a trip.
“So it’s been really cool, though I have gone a little crazy. I was starting to get weird. When I’d go back to the city and try to have conversations with friends I found myself talking a lot, because I hadn’t spoken in days. Like, ‘This answer doesn’t need 400 words from me.’”
Blackbird Spyplane: Do you do more drugs or less drugs in the country than the city?
Clairo: “Less. Which maybe doesn’t make sense, but I think it’s because I’ve yet to throw a party. People really don’t wanna do the drive. I’m just far enough that everyone from the city is like, Yeahhhh I’ll get there some time.”
Blackbird Spyplane: You do these cool NTS sets where you’ve been playing a lot of rare ‘70s soul, jazz, and singer-songwriter music. It’s tight, and it’s sort of unexpected, because you started out so heavily associated with ‘internet genres’…
Clairo: “Yeah, I think the pendulum’s swinging in terms of people craving something tactile, things that feel like a long-process-type experience. Whether it’s buying clothes in person instead of online, or buying records, spending a long time finding things, listening to music that isn’t coming out right now, taking photos with film or even with old digital cameras, like, swapping out SD cards…
“We’ve gotten to a point where you’re being bombarded with so much new information and so many things that you wonder, What was happening before all this? I’ve tried to implement some of that in the way I make music now, studying records I love and trying to learn how they recorded them.”
Blackbird Spyplane: You’re a 45 collector — how many do you have at this point?
Clairo: “My collection’s not that crazy, I have maybe 60 or 70 of them. But even if it’s a record ripped from 45 onto YouTube, I’ll fall in love with imperfections in the way it was ripped, like a scratch on the record, or if something in the recording is way too loud. I like feeling that stuff. And if I hear a different version of the song, I can’t unhear all those weird quirks I first loved about that rip.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Speaking of things with beautiful imperfections, you sent me pictures of a few cherished possessions, including some nicely cooked Gucci loafers (above). Tell me about those, and about your relationship to getting dressed generally.
Clairo: “I bought the loafers probably 5, 6 years ago. At first I didn’t wear them that much. 3, 4 years ago I started wearing them more, and then I started wearing them every day, they started looking tattered, and I really liked that. Now they’re fully formed to my feet and I feel naked without them. It felt good to learn about staples for me, once I started putting those on every day, and started to build a semi-uniform. Taking the time to find a perfect white shirt, the right jeans, those shoes, the right sock — I hadn’t put time into doing that, until I learned what those shoes did for me.
“But at the same time, I thrifted this shirt I’m wearing yesterday, and it’s got all these beads and stuff on it that are right on the edge of falling off. So I also like having things that are extremely… inconvenient? Things that only make sense some times. It’s fun to add something inconvenient to an outfit. Like, ‘I feel safe, I’ve covered my bases — now I can add something that feels a bit more wild.’”
Blackbird Spyplane: I like that. Putting a little frisson into the fit, so you know you’re alive.
Clairo: “Also, I really can’t buy clothes online anymore. I have to feel them. Like, I’ll go to this thrift store near where I live and spend 3 hours, the only person in the store, trying on everything I’d never pick out for myself in any other context, seeing if it fits or if I could do something with it. And I leave with a bunch of stuff I’d never have looked at twice online.”
Blackbird Spyplane: We call that The C.I.R.L.O.C. (Cop I.R.L. Only Challenge) Mindset and it’s powerful. You rarely feel the same way about a garment you just saw while scrolling on your phone and your finger slipped and you smashed the Apple Pay and two days later it showed up on your doorstep.
Clairo: “You won’t!”
Blackbird Spyplane: You sent over a painting by Whyn Lewis (above right). This reminded me of Vashti Bunyan’s album art (above left), and when I poked around I realized Lewis is Bunyan’s daughter, and she paints tons of whippets and other aerodynamic animals…
Clairo: “Aerodynamic is the word for them, yeah! I fell in love with her because of how much I love Vashti. I was so taken by those album covers, and I didn’t realize she was Bunyan’s daughter for a long while. My managers got me this painting for my birthday one year, and I freaked out. Whyn Lewis also has this painting of 2 bunnies dancing, and I loved it so much I got one of the bunnies tattooed on my wrist (above left). It faces this way, and I’m planning on getting one on this wrist that faces that way, so they’ll be reunited.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Finally — you collect tin whistles. Most people know these, if they know them at all, as some Celtic Riverdance s**t. What’s the real deal?
Clairo: “I was on tour in, I wanna say, 2022 and my drummer and I were walking around Salt Lake City one day, exploring. We saw this store where everything was Scottish, so we went in and it was all bagpipes and kilts, and this entire wall of Scotch whistles. I got one in the key of D, and then I got a bunch more.”
Blackbird Spyplane: Are you Scottish?? What the f**k!
Clairo: “No, I’m not Scottish at all. But the store called me in. I crave things that feel specific, and I’ve never seen something so specific. So I bought this whistle thinking, ‘I have to use it,’ and lo and behold it ended up being my secret weapon on a lot of demos.”
Blackbird Spyplane: “Is there tin whistle on whatever you’re putting out next?”
Clairo: “There is actually. It made it. Which feels amazing. Tin whistles are underrated. I want to give them a new lease on life.”
Clairo is on Instagram here. Her site is here. You can find some of her NTS sets, and other playlists, on Soundcloud here.
Check our list of the world’s 35 slappiest shops, where Spyfriends have added a ton of favorites in the comments.
Our roundup of the Best Pants Out is here.
Hahaha, I know exactly the Scottish store she’s talking about in SLC. It’s pretty specific indeed and it’s like 3 blocks away from my apartment
"People craving something tactile" is very real. Love this. Big ups.