In a short time, Claire Cottrill has become one of pop music’s most fascinating chameleons. Even as her songwriting and soft vocals often possess her singular touch, the prodigious 25-year-old has exhibited a specific creative restlessness in her sonic approach. After pivoting from the lo-fi bedroom pop of her early singles to the sounds of lush, rustic 2000s indie rock on 2019’s star-making Immunity and making a hard pivot towards monastic folk on 2021’s Sling, the baroque, ’70s soul-inflected chamber-pop that makes up her third album, Charm, feels like yet another revelation in an increasingly essential catalogue. Charm is Cottrill’s third consecutive turn in the studio with a producer of distinctive aesthetic; while Immunity’s flashes of colour were provided by Rostam Batmanglij and Jack Antonoff worked the boards on Sling, these 11 songs possess the undeniable warmth of studio impresario and Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings founding member Leon Michels. Along with several Daptone compatriots and NYC jazz auteur Marco Benevento, Michels provides the perfect support to Cotrill’s wistful, gorgeously tumbling songcraft; woodwinds flutter across the squishy synth pads of “Slow Dance”, while “Echo” possesses an electro-acoustic hum not unlike legendary UK duo Broadcast and the simmering soul of “Juna” spirals out into miniature psychedelic curlicues. At the centre of it all is Cottrill’s unbelievably intimate vocal touch, which perfectly captures and complements Charm’s lyrical theme of wanting desire while staring uncertainty straight in the eye.