Review: Clairo @ Electric Ballroom, Emily Murphy

As a fairly new listener to Claire Cottrill, better know as Clairo, I was excited to catch the second of her London dates at Electric Ballroom. And whilst Clairo showed herself to be nothing less than an impressive musician and performer, I left feeling a little bit disappointed. Opening with ‘Alewife’, two things became clear – Clairo was going to deliver a beautiful show, but her microphone desperately needed to be louder. The show followed a well curated setlist, mixing tracks from her debut album, Immunity, with earlier singles such as ‘Hot Cheeto’ and ‘2 Hold U’ from her ‘bedroom pop’ days. Her band was exceptional, providing flawless backing to the gentle, but engaging performance she delivered. Even though most of the crowd were very involved in her performance, especially those directly in front of the stage, she fell victim to the chatter from the back of the room being audible over the quieter songs in her set – which, due to her particular style of music, were most of them. This was compounded by poor sound mixing, allowing her soft and lullaby-like vocals to be lost to a microphone that should have been much louder compared to her instruments. This may well have been intentional – Clairo’s exposing lyrics and beautiful voice create a listening experience that feels like you are the only one she is singing to. However, her more poppy and upbeat songs such as ‘North’ and ‘4 Ever’ didn’t suffer the same fate and were well received, being met with a chorus of backing vocals from the crowd. The dreamy and ‘aesthetic’ lighting and stage design, featuring blue and pink washes with images of clouds, water, and rain, not only accentuated the softness of her performance, but also provided beautiful backdrops for the audience to put on their Instagram stories. This constant filming and sharing by much of the crowd didn’t seem to bother Clairo, which contrasts with several other gigs I have been to where performers have made a 48

direct request to their audience to not watch the set through their phone screens.

As a musician who doesn’t shy away from sharing intimate and deeply personal experiences through her music, it was no surprise that much of the crowd were captivated by her performance. Engaging with the crowd even in her more painful and personal songs such as ‘Feel Something’, she never lost the rapture of those who arrived early to watch from the front. She delivered her more soulful tracks with closed eyes and sweeping hand movements, and even sat down at the front of the stage to perform ‘Sinking’, which though honouring the emotions of the song, opened up more opportunities to be distracted by the chatter from the back half of the floor. Perhaps it’s the nature of Clairo’s music, but even a relatively smaller capacity venue such as Electric Ballroom felt a little too big for the tender show she performed. It seemed as though the combination of poor sound design, a moderately chatty audience, and the size of the venue resulted in a disjointedness between the beautiful and stripped down performance she was trying to deliver, and how I was actually experiencing it.

Despite criticisms of the sound design, I was not let down by Clairo herself. The sweetness of her understated questions to the audience between tracks, and the earnest and striking delivery of each song showed impressive talent. A criticism that likely only I have is that sadly, though he was watching from the balcony, Danny L Harle did not make an onstage appearance to perform ‘B.O.M.D’. However my wishful thinking could not get in the way of what was a very strong performance by Clairo, and one that will definitely keep me looking towards her next tour dates.

Image: Markus Spiske