Clairo: Whispery bedroom pop from a streaming superstar

Telegraph

14-03-2025

It seems fitting that Clairo, the American indie-pop singer beloved by Gen Z and hip millennials, should centre her live set on a stage designed to look like a ginormous green velvet sofa. Nothing screams aspiration in the eyes of the houseshare generation – skint and stuck in their tiny flats, forever – more than one day owning luxurious furnishings of their own.
The 26-year-old has sneakily become a streaming superstar in recent years, racking up billions of listens on Spotify and regularly selling out tours without ever truly becoming a darling of the mainstream; she broke out, like many of her contemporaries (Beabadoobee, Soccer Mommy, Gracie Abrams) in lockdown, when young people stuck indoors found solace in her blend of hazy, dreamlike lo-fi indie, a sonic reminder of more social times when venturing outside wasn't off-limits.
Unlike Abrams, who under the watchful eye of her mentor Taylor Swift has become a commercial juggernaut, Clairo still treads the tightrope between genres, her audience equally split between teenage pop fans and bearded music snobs. It's a savvy move: this year will see her perform at legacy festivals like Coachella and Primavera, as well as two shows supporting glossy star Sabrina Carpenter at BST Hyde Park.
At Hammersmith Apollo last night, for the first of two sold-out shows in the capital, Clairo (real name Claire Cottrill) elevated her recorded music – which, while gorgeously melodic, can be repetitive – to something surprisingly vivid, her elfin stature overpowered by the energy fed back to her from the adoring crowd (all decked out in bows and lace, of course, Gen Z's apparent required uniform for any gig these days).
There were sexually-charged, jazz-tinged jams (Add Up My Love, Sexy to Someone, both from her Grammy-nominated third album, Charm, released last year) and heartfelt singalongs to her most popular tracks, the 2019 songs Bags (a twinkly, synth-splattered dissection of the dying days of a relationship) and Sofia, an edgy love song hinging on a garage rock riff plucked straight from the glory days of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. A debut performance of Steeeam, a track by her early band Shelly, garnered euphorious screams and even more glaring iPhone flash-lights added to the sea of recording devices, despite the fact she had politely asked at the start of the show for her young fans to, just this one time, live in the moment and keep their phones in their pockets.
Clairo's vocals are soft and whispery, an addition to her songs rather than their beating heart. This was certainly the case live, too, as she sometimes faltered when trying to balance hitting the higher notes with prancing around the stage. But her genuinely terrific band lifted any slower, weaker moments, with the five on stage flitting between glorious flutes, rhythmic bass and melodic piano, the latter played by Clairo herself, while the retro, art-deco staging gave it all a wonderfully intimate feel, transforming the capacious Apollo into an underground jazz bar. This tour was in honour of Charm, an impressively stylish, confident record, but it was Clairo's own charisma that left you falling deeply under her spell in London.