Photo: Bandcamp
This album from May of 2023 has been stuck on regular rotation in my house, to the extent that I felt obliged to cover it here. And reading up on the artist, I found it’s quite a departure from their usual style.
For years Avalon Emerson has been a techno DJ and producer, specialising in tough, hypnotic beats, albeit betraying an interest in a wider array of music through her sets. On the debut of her project & the Charm, she branches out into pop structures, adding her voice to compositions much more relaxed than the usual dancefloor ragers.
Emerson has been a busy touring DJ since 2016, in demand at clubs like Berlin’s famed Berghain. Her sets can last over ten hours, and drew acclaim for moving between different tempos, while allowing her pop sensibilities to shine through.
Maybe it was inevitable then that she would one day make pop. By all accounts moving into the arena of live music was a big learning curve, particularly learning to sing. On record there are ways of getting around that, but this project does have an air of naivety around the margins.
She collaborated with her wife, Hunter Lombard, on songwriting, then relocated to London to work with producer Bullion, naming this makeshift band & the Charm. Results run from the trip-hop jangle of ‘Sandrail Silhouette’, to ‘A Vision’, with its frisky bassline and steady kick thump.
Emerson may have been unconfident about her voice, but it’s a highlight of many of these tracks, pure if a little unsteady. The song ‘Astrology Poisoning’ is improved by giving the singing room to breathe, the lack of clutter enhancing one of the album’s most captivating choruses.
Most of the songs on & the Charm operate around pop structures, furtive verses giving way to open-hearted choruses. But others, like ‘Dreamliner’, flirt with her usual dance-focused mode. The track then pulls a bait and switch: after three minutes of one chord and snatches of her voice, it introduces a particularly friendly melody.
The most impressive thing about & the Charm might be the way it conveys Avalon Emerson’s personality. There’s an approachable quality to her version of pop music that's appealing, and I think that’s partly due to her inexperience in this particular type of songwriting.
Rather than bludgeoning, it’s all woozily charming, washes of synth and frequent swooning choruses. In the song ‘Hot Evening’, when she sings, “the rush of life with you is as good as it gets”, you believe her.
