PEARL CHARLES - Desert Queen

There was a time when that big, wonderful melting pot generally known as soft-pop ended up, especially in the early 1980s, winking at country and a typically western aesthetic. This gave rise to talk of urban cowboy, an actually quite broad subgenre brought into vogue by singer-songwriters such as Rosanne Cash, Juice Newton, Linda Ronstadt, Crystal Gayle and, of course, the godmother of them all, Dolly Parton, who in those very years returned to making great records after the golden era she'd lived through between the 60s and 70s.

L.A.'s Pearl Charles is a rightful heir to the songwriters just mentioned, both for her outfits fit for a dominatrix at some random rodeo down south, and not only that, but also for her compositional attitude.

While her first two LPs, "Sleepless Dreamer" and "Magic Mirror", released in 2018 and 2021 respectively, generally play up Charles's country-rock approach, the eleven songs on "Desert Queen" sound like the manifesto of an inclination toward a certain urban cowboy sensibility that's now fully out in the open, amplified by the Californian musician's recent decision to move from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree, where she's also set up a home recording studio to write her music far from the din of the city.

An avid reader of Eve Babitz and Joan Didion, Pearl Charles sings of bygone times and processions through small towns admired from a train car window (the melancholy ballad "Just What It Is") and joyfully evokes the storytelling dear to one of her undisputed idols, Christine McVie, on the duet with Tim Burgess ("Gone So Long"). Indeed, the sometimes Texas-saloon-style piano work of the late British singer-songwriter is one of the models Charles clearly aspires to. A case in point? The nocturnal atmosphere of "Step Too Far".

There's also no shortage of vaguely disco music moments, complete with epic strings to underscore everything, as shown by the single "City Lights", and others that follow squarely in the footsteps of Shivaree (!), as demonstrated by the languid pace of "Does This Song Sound Familiar?". There are also more smooth soul episodes, like the four minutes of "Birthday", and potential radio hits with a chorus somewhere between Abba and Linda Ronstadt ("Givin' It Up").

The tracks on "Desert Queen" flow one after another with real pleasure, and it's curious that Charles, as she's stated in several interviews, has more admirers in London than in Los Angeles. Evidently, nostalgia for the urban cowboy hasn't fully (re)emerged yet in the City of Angels. But that, in the end, is another story.

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21/04/2026