![]() There is a laundry list of minutia, details and techniques that make Amoeba such a satisfying track, but it all comes back to that flawlessly rhythmic hook. The duo somehow manages to make a track about self-criticism and neglect and make it groove harder than any other track on Sling. This track feels like a Where’s Wally game of picking out the woodwinds from guitar lines, the chords from the melodies and the drum kit from the smashing milk bottles, (there’s all sorts of these artifacts across the record). It is here where Cottrill and producer Jack Antanoff show the sheer audacity they are willing to employ across the album. Sling would have undone this reputation for the singer, had it not been for Amoeba. As much as the images of “crying before you know why”, and “blisters and the dirt left in between your fingers”, Bambi sounds about as cute as an opener can get, and by it’s end, the listener finds them comfortable in their seat, ushered in by pillowy woodwinds.Ĭlairo, as a viral musician, is how we knew her for her early career. She paints with colours of comfort, wobbly guitars and indulgent pianos, all sprawled around the soundstage like woodland creatures converging on a singsong. Cottrill spends the opening track, Bambi (a self-comparing image), throwing paints at the wall, hinting Slings sonic palette to the listener. It’s one of Sling’s main conflicts, that for Claire to exist as Clairo, she must compromise for the shortcomings of the music industry. The music industry is not an inviting place for young women, let alone those of Claire Cottrill’s viral success and marketable prettiness. “I’m stepping inside a universe defined against my own beliefs”. A drum kit taken straight out of the back seat Joni Mitchell’s big yellow taxi banish the keys and pull Clair’s vocals into the spotlight. Clairo throws her croon to the left speaker as weirdly windy and cold keyboards bring together a sort-of ambiguously melancholic soundstage. But, I didn’t know any of this on my first listen. Couple this reverently relevant voice with flawless production in a timeless ilk, and it’s obvious how Sling has become one of my favourite things to exist. It’s the spirit of Sling, it’s youthfulness and dread and dreaming and longing, that resonated with my 20-year-old self. Needless to say, it soundtracked the rest of the Summer, being my morning music on the bike ride to my café job, it somehow inserted itself into my walk to campus, supervising study sessions and inviting itself to every cup of tea I shared with a friend. Sling, on the other hand, found a way to attach itself so relentlessly to pretty much every month of the first year of my twenties. ![]() It’s an endearing effort, clumsy in places and overflowing with intention and experience. ![]() ![]() For context, this wasn’t my first time listening to Clairo, having the pleasures and woes of my seventeenth year as a human soundtracked by her debut, Immunity. I planted myself directly between the two speakers, angling them subtly to form a perfect stereo field, (it’s the little things). In this case, I was in my teen bedroom in my parents’ house, midsummer sun streaming through the well-worn window, spent after dozens of attempts climbing onto the roof. I usually like to find a peaceful spot, maybe a bedroom or cozy corner or a bright place outdoors. The first listen is a sacred thing, and so I treat it as such. I will probably never forget the first time I listened to Clairo’s Sling.
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