One refreshing vogue not yet over-utilised by the more sculpted Taylors and Sabrinas is: plain musical languorousness, meets hip hop’s capacity for bloody ferocity. This gloms onto the current appetite for studied dumbness, so often exuded by in-real-life very smart artists. Into such warm, deceptive waters — where it’s hard to gauge true depth — dive the terrific Atlanta duo Coco & Clair Clair, on third album, <i>Girl</i>, which follows 2022’s <i>Sexy</i>.
Taylor Nave and Claire Toothill have been at it since the mid teens, after meeting as high-school kids in 2014. Their debut came back in 2017. But it was Covid — Clair Clair’s relocation home to Atlanta and Coco’s graduation — that got them focused, musicking full-time. With jams as solid as these, neatly rapped and cutely sung, inevitably they’ve ended up with plum collaborations and featured on the fourth season of Donald Glover’s <i>Atlanta</i>.
With a typical Gen Alpha magpie approach, Coco & Clair Clair’s music is a cheap, reasonably straightforward scattergun blend, grabbing synths, beats and atmospheres from anywhere in reach, but sticking them firmly within pop formatting. It’s DIY-ish. It’s factory settings, yet still slinks along. Their rapping has a 1980s nursery rhyme lilt, their unison singing even more so. That’s not code for bad MCing, it’s just a tone I’m reaching for: apart from how x-rated and absurdist it is, they could be, say, an Althea and Donna for Generation Brat. Distinct characters come through. So the raw defensive thirst of ‘Kate Spade’ — “<i>Fuck all of the bitches who wanna fuck on my boyfriend / I make him lose his mind every day and every weekend</i>” — has Coco drunk and getting it on, while Clair Clair is clear-eyed, objective, focused on goals — “<i>Write a hit song then I read a big book / I’m all about the lovin’, you can call me bell hooks”</i>.
All as expected, until track four ‘Our House’, which turns out to be that ‘Our House’, the Cosby Stills Nash and Young post-Beatles folk-pop classic from 1970’s <i>Deja Vu</i>. Coco & Clair Clair underpin it with a jungle groove that could be Nia Archives, so it’s a tempo shift as well as conceptually confounding.
<i>Girl</i> is the scene in the movie where the mean girls are being super-mean about someone, but they’re doing so lying on the beach, baking under a technicolour sun, distracted by boys. I love the lyrical lurches from imperiousness to sickly-sweet chill talk. On breakout hit ‘Aggy’ – “This ain’t gonna be another diss track tho / Gotta have competition to make a diss track, hoe / And lucky for you tattered-ass clones / Lookin’ like a jester, you’re no threat to the throne” – to, literally next line — “I’m all about love, don’t mean to be aggy / It’s all good vibes, where’s the party? Drop the addy” (I don’t know if ‘addy’ refers to ‘attitude’ or ‘adderall’ but either works after the whipping. And what immense poetry is ‘tattered-ass clones’). Never too much maximalism or minutiae, a plainspoken schtick-y pop that leaves room for that SZA ‘fuck em all! kill em all!’ scorched earth policy to emotional turmoil, and some great jokes.
<i>Girl</i> leaves one wanting more of Coco & Clair Clair’s world, even with its rushed, grab-bag flavour. With ‘Aggy’ as the closer, perhaps it’s pulled together too quickly, reacting to the crossover impact of that one song. Coco & Clair Clair could become more expansive and build their world more carefully, as well as bouldering their way towards the top of the iconoclast dumb/smart hottie pileup. But whatever, they’re cool.
