Review Summary: For when you can't decide between a disco or a line dance.
I’m not sure if anyone was asking for ABBA inspired retro dance pop country, but after hearing the opening track on Pearl Charles’
Magic Mirror, suddenly all I want is Abba inspired retro dance pop country. “Only for Tonight” is an incredibly effective opening track, coming in hot with a glissando on an electric keyboard and immediately diving into a beat straight from the dance floor of the grooviest disco your parents could find. This is an earworm of the highest qualities, with piano chords jauntily occupying a space that is somewhere between “Dancing Queen” and Kacey Musgraves. The country influence on the track can barely even be called an influence, which is what makes “Only for Tonight” even more impactful as an opening track: Pearl Charles is undoubtedly a country/Americana artist, so you go in expecting some slide guitar and tasteful twang, but are instead immediately transported to a boat off the coast of Mykonos as you share a sangria with Meryl, Pierce, and Colin. You’re lamenting a one night stand, dancing around your apartment like a fool, singing
“Shouldn’t have played this like a man”, even though you are also a man and the blinds to your sliding door-window are wide open for all your neighbors to see.
And the rest of
Magic Mirror is good, certainly, but you can’t help but long for the time that “Only for Tonight” was blaring through your speakers, otherwise known as “five minutes ago”. There’s a retro approach throughout the album that is constantly nodding to the 60s and 70s, but that nod is more in the direction of Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty, all while you’re looking longingly behind your shoulder towards Waterloo. There are some other stunning songs in California Americana vein, with “Don’t Feel Like Myself” being a beautifully depressive ballad that highlights Charles lilt and, when paired with the title-track, teeters right on the border of Fleetwood Mac worship. “Imposter” is a cosmic country track that comes the closest to best incorporating both the disco stylings of the opening track and the Americana sensibilities that Charles clearly has a deep understanding of. “Sweet Sunshine Wine” is so cloyingly sweet that, until the oddly baroque chorus hits, you don’t realize that you’ve been doing a slight shoulder shimmy for two and half minutes.
With
Magic Mirror Pearl Charles put on a masterclass of updating a incredibly fun style of music from decades past. Even with its styling it still hits great emotional heights, oftentimes in a very clever and funny way, as evidenced by closing track “As Long As You’re Mine” a jaunty love song with a sunny backdrop complete with a horn section all about the world ending. However,
Magic Mirror is also, unfortunately, an album that suffers from having far too good of an opening track. “Only for Tonight” presents an entirely different kind of experience than the one actually given. The rest of the album is spent anticipating the fated return of
discountry, a return that is only ever slightly hinted at in the remaining tracks. If Pearl Charles can capitalize on that sound, she’ll create an album that is adored and hated by equally as many people. As I await that album, I’ll dance around my living room listening to “Only for Tonight” and setting up Google alerts for “Mamma Mia 3”.
