Twenty-two-year-old singer songwriter Claire Cottrill – known better as Clairo – began posting her music online around six years ago, quickly winning fans with her unflinchingly honest and real stories. 2017’s lo-fi track Pretty Girl, and it’s accompanying homemade video, proved to be something of a breakthrough, wracking up close to 80 million views on YouTube to date, and leading to her penning a deal with Fader Label, who dropped her debut album Infinity in 2019 to widespread critical acclaim.

For the followup, Clairo returned to her hometown of Atlanta, and with it the family home, where she holed up for the Coronavirus pandemic and began to write. The resulting record, Sling, is one that weighs heavy with ideas of family, of parenthood and motherhood, seemingly hugely influenced by the presence of her mum, to whom the record is dedicated.

Delicate pianos and horns shape opening track Bambi, while Amoeba is built around a playful hook and electro flourishes and perfectly frames Clairo’s tender vocals. Blouse is a doleful, string-laden affair, Joanie an undulating near-five minute instrumental named for her pet dog, and Little Changes a sweeping slice of tinkling piano. 

Reaper is a contender for the album’s standout track, a powerful, undulating affair that highlight’s Clairo’s incredible lyrical ability (“She's coming closer, I can feel her breathe / I keep forgetting that I'll have a family”). In an interview with Matt Wilkinson for Apple Music, Clairo discussed the song and it’s genesis, saying: “Reaper came into fruition by talking to my mom about her role in my life, but I looked at my mom very differently because I was able to see all of the sacrifices that she had made for me, also thinking a lot about how I know less about who my mom was before she was a wife and before she was mom.”

It’s a sentiment that runs throughout Sling, an album that examines some of the most important relationships in all our lives, and how they shape our own experiences in adulthood. 

Sling tracklist:

1. Bambi
2. Amoeba
3. Partridge
4. Zinnias
5. Blouse
6. Wade
7. Harbor
8. Just For Today
9. Joanie
10. Reaper
11. Little Changes
12. Management

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.