I've been having an absolute blast with Pearl Charles for the last couple of weeks. The midpoint in our short relationship was at Hackney's Moth Club on the night when Beyoncé kicked off her London residency. The best people were at the Moth that night. After Pearl sent over her Q&A answers I decided to bite the bullet and give every track a bloody good listening to. I even watched interviews and her music videos on YouTube. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.
PAUL DETTMANN
Does This Song Sound Familiar (12")
A strong start. I love chuggy driving tunes and this is one of those. There is no intro. It just feels like the desert, Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway. Music blows like the desert. Wind into my soul. A gentle breeze pulls you under. Makes you feel like you're home. Oh this is good. Have you heard it once before? No you have not, not like this. She's addressing the listener directly.
All of these songs are more abstract than most of the music I have been listening to this spring. Those narrative Country music stories are very literal, leaving little open to interpretation. Pearl Charles does not write like that very often. She is more like Stevie Nicks. You're not supposed to know exactly what she means. You have to fill in gaps, which means it is harder for me to tell you exactly what is on her mind. I love that! The video is Pearl's favourite shoot of this album. It is just as abstract as the lyrics.
City Lights (12")
My gateway to Pearl Charles, being the first song on Spotify's artist page. It is a class act but it has a significant meaning. Angeleno Pearl left the city for Joshua Tree, where she now lives in what sounds like an amazing home-stroke-recording studio. I first heard of Joshua Tree in 1987 when U2 named an album after the place. British folk are forever confused. Is it just one tree? Is it a town? It's certainly a whole national park. I think she is being vague to avoid the tourists.
Joshua Tree is east of Palm Springs and south of the Mojave, setting for my first Paul Charles novel, although you're not expected to know that detail. As well as those beautiful trees there are things like cactus and tumbleweed. It looks stunning and it really helps to understand this album and in particular this song. Pearl loved the city but she had to leave. Anyone who has lived in London as a migrant to that town will sooner or later have the same feeling. I prefer living half an hour a way, in the hills of Buckinghamshire. In a dry year it can look very much like the Mojave, I like to think.
Pearl: Although I left the city, I wanted to carry the tradition of my favourite female Angeleno writers – Eve Babitz and Joan Didion – into my desert life and carry the torch of that perspective into this new landscape.
In case you don't know, Eve Babitz was a writer but she also designed album covers for luminaries like the delightful Linda Ronstadt. Linda shares a physical likeness with Pearl, now I think about it. Joan Didion is perhaps more famous here and she was a journalist with Hunter S. Thompson tendencies. The modern British equivalent, although a very poor second, might be either Jon Ronson or Louis Theroux.
Another way to say all of this is that Pearl has impeccable taste in prose. I found out that you're not supposed to like both Eve and Joan but what the hell. And I can tell from Pearl's quotes and her lightness of being that she loves a good read. She is also very much a visual artist who takes pride in her stage costumes, and it shows. I found an interview where she talked about this and about Christine McVie, who is virtually a deity in our 1950s mid-century house.
If you watched that interview and are British, you almost certainly won't understand the nudie suit reference. No, it's not that.
Step Too Far
You will learn in the Q&A that this is one of Pearl's favourite songs on the record. It is slow, slowwwww, and builds nicely. I have next to no idea what the lyrics are about and that's also cool.
Insight from an interview with The Big Takeover: So discovering that, I think, really opened up a whole new world for me. And then all the offshoots of that, whether it was Laurel Canyon style music – which I was pretty familiar with since I grew up in Hollywood, just blocks away from Laurel Canyon – and more soft rock, like yachty kind of stuff, The Eagles. All those bands melded a little bit of country and a little bit of the L.A. sound. And also, of course, a little bit of ABBA, a little bit of disco – all those bands kind of dipped their toe into that pool, as well. I definitely saw all of that through the country, disco, yachty, Laurel Canyon combo.
I've visited Laurel Canyon looking for ghosts of the 1970s. Pearl is describing my record collection in one paragraph. It is David Lynch country and make no mistake. Even the Canyon Country Store is famous, and it's just the local grocery. It features in a Doors' song. Mama Cass actually lived in the building for a while.
Middle of the Night
She can hear me calling her. She sounds like she's woken from a dream, or is still asleep in the middle of one. I think the night is the natural time of day for this music. I'm reluctant to think of it as disco because it's so much slower. It can be really slow like jazz, and quieter than old disco can be. It's not high-pitched really fast poppy poppy disco. I wrote before that it's disco for grown-ups and I think that works. Pearl often sings about the night. Her most-streamed song is Only For Tonight which was the final encore at Moth Club.
Stylistically, Desert Queen sonically expands on the disco, funk and soft rock explored on her last album, Magic Mirror.
Just What It Is (12")
This is the latest single in this album release cycle and it's fabulous. The context is something around mistakes made in childhood. Whatever it was you did all those years ago that you are still embarrassed about, let it go. Chances are everyone you upset forget about it already. This song is great live and just runs and runs. I could listen to this jam all night and all the next day. Pearl herself has a wonderful way of talking about this record.
Pearl: It's a wistful tale of days gone by and small town parades viewed from train car windows set to a sparkling sonic folk image with soft focused, Vaseline-lensed vocal harmonies.
Givin' It Up (Taurus Rising Mix)
I realise now that I am not saying much if I say that Pearl told me she was Taurus. You can probably surmise from this song title that she's a Taurus Rising. But did you know that this is also the name of the record company and studio that she co-owns with guitarist and producer Michael? They're entrepreneurs too!
Taureans are known for their love of food, among other beautiful and sensual aspects of life. I sense Pearl has expensive tastes. The tour ended with dinner at Rules, an English paradise off the Strand that opened in 1798. This song is very much in the slow, cool disco side of Pearl's catalogue.
Birthday
This is a really cool jazzy song with a saxophone. She asked at the show if it was anyone's birthday but it was sort of a trick question. In this song, a very unreliable friend or partner goes around pretending to everyone that it's his birthday to get attention. He wants his name up in lights. It's all me, me, me. He's a fraud.
Smoke In The Limousine
This is the dreamy Joni or Christine's Songbird acoustic track. It's slightly trippy.
Nothin' On Me
I love this one. It's the one that most exemplifies a #ZFG attitude. She'll be gone with the breeze. She's closed off. She's done a runner early in the morning. She was born to be free. But what is that drum sound?
Sorry. Did you miss me? I just spent an hour with Christine McVie's back catalogue. I found what I wanted. The only Mac tune to feature calypso-style steel drums was written by Christine and Bob Welch at Benifold house in England. This song has Did You Ever Love Me written through the middle like bright pink seaside rock. God I love it!
Gone So Long ft. Tim Burgess
I don't mind admitting I don't listen to the Charlatans, but Tim Burgess is a class act on these shores. Regular readers know that I would either die or kill for a good duet and this is a slammer. Pearl likens it to Fleetwood Mac, and I know how much she associates with Christine McVie in particular, which is essentially an English vibe. Christine is what I imagine a classical lady of the manor would be like if she joined a '60s blues rock band. I start to see why Pearl loves coming here. There's something in the air. This song calls to mind older Mac incarnations, perhaps Christine McVie before they met Stevie and Lindsey, singing Heroes Are Hard to Find or Come a Little Bit Closer. I love this one for all these reasons.
You Know It Ain't Right
I friend or lover is disappointing her again. I sense communication problems. Men typically don't like to talk. I know I don't. I can write stuff down, but fuck me if I can talk about feelings. These last two tracks are very Fleetwood Mac. They're just great.
Pearl Charles Q&A
I emailed Pearl's London publicists before the Moth Club to tentatively ask if she would mind awfully doing an email Q&A. I never expect a reply but Amy replied within a few minutes, and promised to get on it. I always say something like "this should take no more than five minutes, just answer whichever questions you like the look of, if any, or if none at all then okay fair enough" but of course Pearl answered every single question!
It's not a fair thing to ask an artist which of their songs is their favourite, so I levelled it out by specifying the current album only. Some people just sort of fudge it, or say the latest single, but Pearl really thought about all her answers. Hers was a surprise choice, but one that shines a light on Pearl a little. It's not one of the obvious catchy singles. Her videos on YouTube really add to your understanding of the music too.
Which song on the new album means the most to you?
It’s so hard to pick a favorite because I feel like the songs are my children, but if I had to pick one I think it would have to be Step Too Far.
Favorite shoot for one of your videos?
Michael and I shot the music video for Does This Song Sound Familiar impromptu on super 8 out in Death Valley, so that was an especially fun and personal shoot.
Your top 3 interesting things about LA for UK readers?
I love Musso & Frank, it’s a super old Hollywood restaurant that hasn’t changed a thing and feels like you’re stepping back in time the moment you walk in. Topanga Canyon is basically the Laurel Canyon of the beach, so for people who want to experience that bohemian vibe in a different part of town, that’s the spot! Lastly, everyone knows LA has the best Mexican food outside of Mexico, but what a lot of people may not know is that LA also has some of the best Asian food around, check out the Jonathan Gold lists (an amazing LA Times food writer) for tips about which restaurants to check out!
Favourite thing about England / London?
The audiences! I’m also definitely partial to an English breakfast!
People used to say that the best way to eat in England was to have breakfast three times a day. I have to agree with that. What's your favourite gig venue in London?
I’ve only had the pleasure of playing a few venues in London and they’ve all been amazing, but our last sold out show at Omeara was definitely one for the record books.
I bumped into someone at Moth Club who was at that Omeara show and she said it was memorable! I see you played King Tut's on Glasgow's St. Vincent Street this week. I know Glasgow: we used to hang around at Rab Ha's in Merchant City when I worked there. What do you love most about Scotland?
Scottish people are so lively and have embraced us with open arms, the love is mutual!
Best live venue in LA?
A lot of my favorite LA venues have closed sadly, but the Hollywood Bowl is an eternal classic.
I almost can't bear to stop writing about Pearl Charles, so just for good measure I booked a ticket to her Islington, UK appearance in the autumn supporting someone called Neal Francis who (it turns out) is really strong too!
