Interview with Pearl Charles: ‘For me, the 70’s were the height of pop music and art’

LA’s rock and cosmic country singer Pearl Charles brought out her second full length album, Magic Mirror, earlier this year and is heading back to the studio later this month to give us some more tracks.

‘The new songs have a Bee Gees feel, but are also always influenced by Fleetwood Mac,’ she said. Charles started playing piano aged five, having begged her parents for lessons for a year. She got her professional start as a musician aged 18 in a country duo called the Driftwood Singers with Christian Lee Hutson, whom she met studying at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita. She went on to join a garage rock band called the Blank Tapes as their drummer. ‘I wanted to be in musical theatre as a child but my parents are from LA and they didn’t really want that for me,’ she said. ‘When I was older, I wanted to start playing in bands but I didn’t have the background.’

Magic Mirror gives us 10 introspective tracks that chart Charles’ relationship status as she moves from a break-up at the start of the record to finding happiness by the end of it, fusing her love of country, soft rock and disco. The opening track, ‘Only For Tonight’, takes her away from her country and garage roots and could easily be an ABBA song, with its big, singalong chorus and Dancing Queen-style piano: ‘I think the classic songwriting tradition will never get old, there’s always room for songs with a good chorus and a message,’ she said. ‘Only For Tonight’ is essentially about getting attached to someone after a one night stand: ‘It’s a clear homage to ABBA,’ she said. ‘It was written with a friend who’d learned Dancing Queen for a wedding, ABBA’s actually complex. It’s about dealing with the regrets of a one night stand and what that feels like.’

As the chorus goes: ‘Only for tonight, we can be together, underneath those lights, looks like we’ll last forever.’

I tell her I like the duality of the upbeat, disco melody and the somewhat mournful lyrics: ‘I like representing that duality in my music. Someone described my record as ‘Saturday night and Sunday mornings’ music and I loved that,’ she said. I say that her latest album would be a great road trip soundtrack and she laughs: ‘Yeah, my music is definitely road trip music.’

‘I got into the 70’s and appreciated the songwriting, the lyrics and how they put songs together’

It turns out that despite her own influences, Charles’ parents were more into 60’s music than anything from the 70’s: ‘When I was a kid, ABBA wasn’t taken very seriously, I thought they were a party band!,’ she laughed. ‘In the 90’s, the 70’s were trendy. My first EP (Pearl Charles, 2015) is more garagey and 60’s influenced but then I discovered Fleetwood Mac and bands like The Eagles. There was an aversion then to any music that was too mainstream but I got into the 70’s and appreciated the songwriting, the lyrics and how they put songs together. For me, the 70’s were the height of pop music and art. I think there’s a thing with soft music where many people want to put on a hard exterior to show they’re cool, they’re scared to be vulnerable but they don’t need to be.’

Another track on Magic Mirror, ‘Don’t Feel Like Myself’, with its breezy slide guitar and Karen Carpenter-style vocals, details how Charles gets over the break-up at the beginning of the record: ‘It tells a story, about not recognising yourself after the break-up, when you’re partying, trying to fill the void and trying to confront yourself,’ she said. Her unhappiness at the time is reflected by the lyrics: ‘Some days you wake up, walking on the wrong side, a face in the mirror, your reflection won’t look you in the eye. Too scared to die but, but barely alive and I don’t even feel like myself.’

‘Magic Mirror’, the album’s title track, is a natural follow-on, and is about dealing with your inner demons. ‘Actually, this song has a very cosmic intervention,’ Charles said. ‘The title came to me in a dream. Sometimes, I ask the universe to bring me an idea, sometimes, it does, sometimes, it doesn’t. I woke up and I knew that Magic Mirror had to be the title of the album before I even had the song. I liked the duality of it, the Alice in Wonderland idea. I wrote the song with my friend Morgan, she didn’t know what I wanted to call it but she told me that she kept thinking of the word “mirror”, so I knew it was meant to be.’

The dreamlike, almost psychedelic, feel to the song is evident from the lyrics: ‘May be high, but I’m looking down. Can’t tell the sky from the ground. My whole world’s trapped inside the looking glass and I’m just trying to find my way out.’

‘Songwriting is one of my favourite things to do’

For Charles, songwriting is extremely cathartic: ‘It’s therapeutic, it’s my main emotional support, songwriting is one of my favourite things to do, contextualising the emotions, the back and forth when you co-write a song and talk about your feelings,’ she said.

The last four tracks on the album represent Charles’ newfound romantic stability. ‘Sweet Sunshine Wine’ is notable for the harpsichord solo and has a cinematic quality to it, it feels like a classic 70’s love song. ‘That track is cosmically related to how I met my partner (Michael Rault) in real life,’ she said. ‘He’s in the Canadian band, Young Guv. He knew my music and reached out to me and we’ve been together ever since. My friend Matty helped me write the song.’

The Bonnie Raitt-inspired final track, ‘As Long As You’re Mine’, is an instance of life imitating art: ‘I wrote it before I met him, the idea of a partner who could go the distance with you,’ she said. ‘He sings back up on some of my tracks. He helped tweak the lyrics to ‘All the Way’, my lyrics were more vague but he made it more about our relationship, it’s magical.’

Charles has been to some incredible gigs, most notably Desert Trip, a six day music festival that took place on October 2016 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. Performers included The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and The Who. ‘I was sooo lucky to see that, it was so amazing,’ she said. ‘You know, though, if I could see anyone play tonight, I’d love to see some of my friends play.’

If she could collaborate with anyone, she’d pick a classic act from the 70’s: ‘I’m not picky, if one of my favourite guys from the 70’s would write a song with me, I’d take it! I’d love to collaborate with ABBA or Chrissie McVie (from Fleetwood Mac).’

She is a huge fan of Maryland-based singer-songwriter Father John Misty. ‘As a kid, I was a big Rilo Kiley fan (an indie rock band from LA) but I was also attracted to older music like Patsy Cline, Leonard Cohen and John Prine.’ Since December, she and Rault have been living in Landers, just a few kilometres north of Yucca Valley, bordering the city of Joshua Tree and the beautiful Joshua Tree National Park. I tell her that I’m envious and that I’d love to live there and she launches into a sweet speech about how lucky she is to be there: ‘There’s such an incredible, growing community of artists out here, it’s so inspiring. We can build our own little studio. We bought a Rhoads guitar, it’s special to me and makes me more passionate about music. My favourite guitar is probably my Gibson D-40 guitar.’

We chat for a while about musical earworms and she tells me that hers this week is ‘Travellin’ by The Jeremy Spencer Band from 1979 (Spencer is a British guitarist and founding member of Fleetwood Mac.) ‘My boyfriend gets annoyed because I play it every day, it’s sooooo good! If it’s good, I want to wear it out!’

(Photo credit: Bobbi Rich.)