Coco & Clair Clair: Girl review – girlish singsong with sizzle and spark

Oddball Atlanta duo Coco & Clair Clair have been making music together for nearly a decade but they only really broke through in 2022, when their 2017 track Pretty went viral on TikTok. They are quintessentially modern stars: singer-rappers whose sizzle and spark comes from their canny use of juxtaposition. Their reference points are painfully niche (“Don’t follow me when you’re looking like Vincent Gallo” goes one burn on Pretty) or hilariously mass-culture (their latest single is titled Kate Spade). Their lyrics often take the form of callous disses that teeter on the edge of outright nastiness, but they are always delivered in girlish singsong.

The bit hasn’t got old yet, but Coco & Clair Clair’s second full-length album Girl tries to break new ground anyway. On the washed-out drum’n’bass ballad Our House, a cover of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young track, Clair Clair’s vocals take on a dreamy, blissed-out quality, making the song feel like a Beach House remix you would have found on the Hype Machine circa 2012. Everyone But You captures the hi-fi post-grunge era of the 90s and 2000s, Coco’s rapping taking on an ominous quality as the song builds to a blown-out guitar solo. This music all vaguely recalls the “blog era” – the mid-2010s period when sites such as Hipster Runoff obsessively chronicled the ins and outs of an ironic, maximalist indie music industry – and no single song more so than My Girl, a glitched-out dance track that brings early Crystal Castles to mind. It is heartening to know that, after years of making diffuse, lightweight pop, Coco and Clair Clair can move into headier zones without losing their spark.