What I Need is brilliant MOR country-pop, Imposter has a light funk strut to the backing but Charles’ voice basically tells a post-modern torch ballad and after the aforementioned Karen Carpenter-aping weepies that anchor the middle of the album there’s a vibe to All The Way that suggests how Olivia Newton-John might have sounded with Tom Petty in the producer’s chair and the Heartbreakers as backing band.Ĭinematic and subtly glorious this is an album of defiant pop songs, nothing to fault here at all. In part one of the interview with Southern California singer and songwriter Pearl Charles, we traversed the city of Los Angeles and the desert of Joshua Tree to explore the intersection of drugs, music and self-awareness. That 70s vibe stays in place across the trim 37-minute run-time of this filler-less/filter-less set of charming pop tunes, but the disco vibe drops down into a more soft-rock feel for much of what follows. Its an all but direct lift of Dancing Queen’s feel (less subtle than when Elvis Costello got the baking paper out for Oliver’s Army’s little piano flourish) that opens this record on a disco-tinged, upbeat and hopeful Only For Tonight which is both an album-starter and a weekend-starter. Pearl Charles 'Magic Mirror' video created by Kanine Records: 724 views, 11 likes, 4 loves, 0. The spirit of Carpenter lives inside Don’t Feel Like Myself, both the arrangement and the lyric – but for the most part the feel is more sunny and Californian 70s early Fleetwood Mac, Carole King and some lovely countrypolitan that isn’t a million miles from Linda Ronstadt (the title track is another Karen Carpenter moment though, beautifully so).īut the first thing you’ll notice – it’s unavoidable and glorious – is the influence of ABBA. 724 views, 11 likes, 4 loves, 0 comments, 0 shares. It is an empowering and hopeful look at love, and the euphoria to be found in understanding oneself. And where Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising (probably my 2019 Record of the Year) was like some second coming of Karen Carpenter, Charles’ reference points are less dramatic on much of Magic Mirror. Released in January of this year, Pearl Charles’ sophomore album Magic Mirror is an introspective exploration of a relationship’s breakdown, and the healing period that follows. Pearl Charles reminds me of Weyes Blood – which is to say there is that throwback to the 1970s, to AOR and MOR but with the twist of modern vitality a determined hipness that is never arch but which marks the work as more than just throwback as its own thing.
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