King Princess

Claire Chicha is feeling more free than ever before. The LA-based, French-Korean songwriter and producer has spent the past five years as spill tab honing a sound that is as raw-edged as it is refined, channelling low-slung guitar-strumming confessionals as well as the earworming melodic hooks of anthemic pop to produce a heady and distinctive mix. “I’m confident following the weird thing to find my voice,” Chicha says. “I’m only ever making music that I’m really passionate and excited about – every song is my favourite.”

Following the 2019 release of her intimate and infectious debut single “Decompose”, Chicha has evolved her spill tab project through three EPs: 2020’s synth-pop influenced Oatmilk, 2021’s playful, uptempo Bonnie, featuring Gus Dapperton and Tommy Genesis, and 2023’s co-produced, sonically-intricate Klepto, which gleefully meanders from the Hiatus Kaiyote-influenced jazz freakouts of “CRÈME BRÛLÉE!” to the guitar-chugging thump of “Splinter”. Live, meanwhile, Chicha has been tapped for her explosively energetic presence to open the North American leg of popstar Sabrina Carpenter’s tour, as well as touring through Australia with alt-rock trio Wallows.

On her remarkable debut album, ANGIE, Chicha’s freewheeling sound finds its fullest expression, harnessing this onstage experience and recorded experimentation to joyously veer from the bass-weight and pitched-up vocals of glitchy opener “PINK LEMONADE” to the grungy distortion and sultry French-language lyrics of “De Guerre”, euphoric guitar solos of the record’s title track and quiet vulnerability of “wet veneer”. Here we find Chicha only ever chasing that “weird thing” to produce 14(?) tracks of uninhibited creativity that fizz with an infectious enthusiasm and intricate musicianship.

ANGIE is the product of a lifetime’s experience. Born to her French Algerian composer father and Korean pianist mother, Chicha spent her early childhood in the mixing room of her parents’ LA post-production studio, bringing coffees to artists as they tracked scores for exciting new projects. “I hung out in that studio all the time until I was around 10 years old, absorbing jazz music my dad was into and classical music that my mom loved,” Chicha says. “My mom had a big hand in making me an adventurous kid, always trying new things from piano to harp and violin, forever soaking up new sounds.”

At 12, Chicha’s life was uprooted as she relocated to Thailand to live with her mother’s family following the collapse of her parents’ business after the 2008 recession. What followed was an unstable and formative few years of early teenagedom, navigating new cultures and life changes. In Thailand, Chicha began learning guitar to cover the Paramore and Green Day tracks she had grown to love while also becoming immersed in Thai traditional music. After a year, she moved once more to live with her aunt in Paris and there she was introduced to the classic sound of Serge Gainsbourg and Édith Piaf before ultimately returning to LA following the untimely death of her father.

“I had to become a real people person to fit in everywhere I was moving, and it immersed me into so many different styles of music,” she says. “I went from listening to the nasal singing of Thai traditional music at muay thai fights in Bangkok, to emotive classic French songs. It definitely informed the need to experiment with my sound as I became more interested in making music.”

At high school in LA, Chicha joined one of the country’s foremost show choirs and realised a natural aptitude for stagecraft and performance as she sang medleys in competitions throughout the US. Going on to study Music Business at NYU, Chicha found a love for the alternative soul and singer-songwriting of the likes of Moses Sumney and Bon Iver, as well as developing her own sound while spending summers interning as an A&R at Atlantic Records and being exposed to the gamut of New York’s live music scene.

“I was going to so many shows as an A&R intern and seeing just how much a lot of music sounded alike,” she says. “It made me realise I wanted my music to feel different, to cut through the noise but still make something that felt honest to me.”

Beginning to independently release tracks, Chicha gradually built a loyal fanbase with the release of wistful early numbers “Calvaire” and “Cotton Candy” and soon found herself signed to a major label. Yet, as her career progressed through the COVID pandemic the demands of a corporate major began to conflict with her own searching style. “My last two EPs were under contract and it felt like I was always chasing the carrot,” she says, “I felt a certain pressure to put out tracks quickly and find that ‘hit’. It wasn’t the right environment to truly make what I wanted.”

Ultimately parting ways with her label, Chicha began work on the music for what would become ANGIE, exploring new sounds and ideas with her LA-based community of collaborators like producer David Marinelli, Solomonophonic, Wyatt and Austin and John DeBold, without expectation. “It became this beautiful experience of only following ideas that I really believed in and exploring all the musical avenues I hadn’t before,” she says. “I’ve never been more excited about the songs on ANGIE, and I’ve never felt like a project is more mine.”

Writing and recording while touring with Sabrina Carpenter and Wallows, Chicha road-tested her new tracks to see what might land best with an audience who had likely never heard her music before. “You have to win people’s hearts as an opener and you can see what resonates and what doesn’t,” she says. “I would watch people fall in love or not and it’s usually always the song you’re having the most fun with that does the best. That’s what I put on the record.”

Chicha describes the title track and “PINK LEMONADE” as the “grandma and grandpa of the record”, embodying the polar opposites of warm, organic instrumentation and vintage synths on “ANGIE” and electronic-influenced glitches and formatted vocals on “Pink Lemonade”. “The best songs come from writing the main idea in a day, as it’s so instinctual,” she says. “Both of these tracks emerged from single sessions, ANGIE from a riff I was playing on this gorgeous nylon guitar at John Hill’s studio and PINK LEMONADE came from a clip taken out of a 40-minute jam that we then chopped and spliced. They feel like the two sides of me.”

Thematically, ANGIE isn’t just one of Chicha’s favourite names but also the moniker she has given her old persona in the music industry, another side of herself who would often work on six sessions a week and try to please everyone else before herself. “The album is a love letter to that part of me that hated herself and everything she was making, and a move towards trying to find freedom now,” she explains. “I used to get nauseous looking at Ableton but now I feel so much pride and excitement in co-producing this whole record, so I can’t hate on that old version of me too hard.”

Throughout the album Chicha bravely explores new sonic worlds and vulnerabilities. “De Guerre”, for instance, takes on a hyperpop eclecticism, threading Chicha’s nonchalant French lyrics over a harsh synth-bassline and pounding drums, building an intricate soundworld of speeding melodic motifs, while the boylife feature “Paranoia” is a deeply personal meditation on her past relationships. “I want the album to feel like the most honest thing I’ve done,” she says. “It’s personal not just in its themes but also in the production and sound design, which is as important to me as the lyrics. I want to create a whole world of textures and feeling in sound.”

From the bossa nova romanticism of “Hold Me” to the panning synths and chopped vocals of “Buttass3”(will eventually rename this lol), the earthy funk groove of “Assis”(might be renaming this as well) and downtempo electronic atmospherics of “Doesn’t That Scare You”, on ANGIE Chicha builds a luscious, deep and often unexpected universe all of her own. It’s spill tab fully in control and free to follow wherever the sound goes next – all we need to do is listen.