The Pop Corporation

Pop’s best You Can’t Sit With Us pair, Coco + Clair Clair are back with a new album after dropping the achingly cool ‘Aggy’ [listen here] which cements their place as one of the more unique acts to hail from Atlanta.

With their to-the-minute slang, they’re snarking again and saying “delulu” and, while those would be intensely irritating in the hands of anyone else, there’s a bitchy charm to these two, which is undeniable. They’re fully immersed in that weird, dadaist corner of memes and the internet, and honestly, they’d not invite us to any party they were at for typing any of the previous words we’ve jotted down.

Who can blame them?

We got enthusiastic after being tipped off about them after the release of their first LP, and now, they’ve burrowed further into their influences, but emerged with something of a transition in their sound. It’s not like they’ve gone country or anything, but they’ve developed and proving to be an alt pop act worth repeat listens.

What has shown itself is more vulnerability, but delivered in an ice-cold, disaffected manner that made them so charming in the first place. There’s the mildest of echoes of Lana Del Rey’s doompop, mixed in with electro and maybe vaporwave, all pinned with beats less lo-fi than their first cut. There’s chopped up trap, and the duo boast about being too big for the sleb dating app Raya, and the fact we didn’t even know that there was such an app speaks to the sharpened point that Coco + Clair Clair speak through.

And then there’s a cover of ‘Our House’ by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, which is a sentence we didn’t see ourselves ever writing. More baffling still is that it’s great. Better still is that it’ll no doubt irritate some boomers, and we aren’t sure if this group would love that, or roll their eyes.

Of course, any notion of tweeness is dealt with by some vicious asides, taking jabs at “fugly bitches” and “fuck all of the bitches who wanna fuck on my boyfriend… I’m a bad bitch, I’ll kill the both of us”. They’re taking no prisoners, echoing the mean grrrrl hipsters from Web 2.0 era internet fashion corners, like reading Hipster Runoff while listening to mislabelled remix jacked from Limewire.

Fact is, while a lot of new pop can lack personality, Coco + Clair Clair have it in spades, even if it never becomes clear whether they’re in character or they’re really like this. The guessing game is all part of the fun. Besides, who else is going to deliver a verse like this?

Y’all know how to copy but you don’t know how to have it

Sounding like a suburban bitch a trait, not a habit

Not my son you’re my pet, call you Peter Rabbit

Tryna steal my flow like a bald-headed bandit

Didn’t expect to already be a mother

Got an IUD you bitches must’ve crawled under

I’m an absent mom y’all can get off my udder

And I didn’t fucking stutter

You can fucking piss off, bitch

Pair this attitude – read that however you want it – with some unusual swerves in production, such as a relatively unexpected fuzz guitar and psychedelics, there’s a don’t give a single fuck theme that runs through everything they do and it completely refreshing to hear and see.

On TikTok, where old internet ideals run deep inasmuch that jargon is so fresh that it ages like yoghurt and trends live and die before it gets anywhere near someone stealing it and reusing it on Instagram, Coco + Clair Clair have been lumped in with Bimbocore, which feels both apt and mildly unfair.

You’ll hear “do you see me like I want you to see me? Will you think I’m cool if I watch this movie?”, but at the same time “I’m too rare for Raya, stop inviting me, cucks.” We keep getting told that we’ve been in Brat Summer, but all the real hip kids are living in whatever Vincent Gallo referencing, narrowed eyed, constantly on their phone and “pandemic and recession but the dumb bitch economy is boomin’ – how much would it cost you to get off my dick?“

Whatever it all means, it is great to have them back.