PEARL CHARLES – DESERT QUEEN: REVIEW

PEARL CHARLES

Desert Queen (Taurus Rising Records)

When you hear someone describe an album as a dance record, or more specifically a ‘70s style dance record, you would almost certainly be thinking disco, hips pushed forward and a sprinkling of glitter. Or maybe funk, with that more pronounced edge of elbows out and a flash of flesh. These are not inclined to subtlety but rather pronounced gestures in every way – not that there’s anything wrong with that my brothers and sisters in silk.

But there is a third way, one with longer skirts and fuller shirts, with glides more than strides, with tempos inducing moves but ones less frenetic. Think Tina Charles and Hot Chocolate on one side of the Atlantic, The Spinners or Three Degrees on the other. Think of this when I tell you that Desert Queen is a dance record with its roots and suits in the 1970s.

That decade is not unfamiliar to the Californian Pearl (no relation to Tina) Charles. Her previous album, 2021’s Magic Mirror, was a deep immersion in soft rock lightly dusted with psychedelics: full of hazy melodies with unabashed sweetness, occasionally laced with a dash of tartness; country-into-rock beats where you could just make out the feet tapping under very wide flares; and dreamscapes that mixed Laurel Canyon introspection with desert fringe imagination.

This time though, Charles throws off the denim mindset and it’s all about the groove baby. Still a bit trippy, still a bit dreamy, still a bit country-fied – and in Step Too Far somehow all three – but definitely the groove.

Maybe none more so than the bonus track, You Know It Ain’t Right, which inhabits a yacht rock-friendly burst of rhythmic pop, right down to the Steve Lukather-like guitar solo, but City Lights calls to me from the Hot Chocolate corner. Synthesised strings and hand percussion ripple forward and back, and around Charles’ languid lead vocal is both a high and a low voice for an effect that teeters deliciously on the edge of comic. Then we are offered a hook that is the kissing cousin of You Sexy Thing’s that opens the door to more assertive strings and a full commitment to the bit.

While the squelchy keys of Nothing On Me is paired with steel drums for a surprising blend that lands somewhere between the Caribbean and downtown LA, the brass in Birthday that sidles up to your ears nods to a Willie Mitchell production for Al Green, (though Mitchell probably would not have used the pedal steel that sneaks in here). In both cases the tempo is just propulsive enough to nudge you along, a light flavour of the church in its lovers’ rhythm for Birthday, a cocktail hour shuffle for Nothing On Me.

And even the chunky chord glam stylings of Gone So Long, with The Charlatans’ singer, Tim Burgess, warmly delivering over wide-legged guitar lines, retains its smooth rhythm that swishes more than stomps.

At opposite ends of the album’s spectrum are the opening song, Does This Song Sound Familiar?, which is brisk and rocky, and Smoke In The Limousine, which is a bit like Henry Mancini arranging for Claudine Longet, and it’s possible to imagine the album without them. Maybe replaced by that bonus track. But actually, within the confines of Desert Queen over time they begin to play like between-courses dishes that set up the better things to come, those invitations to dance that ease your hips and soften your elbows for company.

READ MORE

Pearl Charles – Magic Mirror: album review

LISTEN MORE

BANDCAMP: Listen to Pearl Charles – Desert Queen