Pearl Charles – “Middle of the Night”

Another neon-lit incantation out of the upcoming album from RSTB fave Pearl Charles this week. The latest single in the run up to her quickly approaching opus, Desert Queen, finds the West Coast songwriter walking the line between sleep and dream, slinking through the veil that separates realities. The song, as Charles notes, is “meant to bring on an exploration of the nocturnal realms, and particularly the liminal spaces between sleeping and waking that occur when experimenting with different potions and arcane rituals on darkest nights.”

With a disco shiver shaking through its bedrock of ‘70s soul, the song reimagines the vapor trails of “Miss You” if it was recorded at Muscle Shoals rather than in the midst of Parisian decadence. Rault’s guitars flash with the heat of chrome under the California sun, but Charles cools the song with an ice water chorus. A bouquet of background vocals round out the track, giving it just one more touch of ‘70s glamour. In the wake of Magic Mirror, Pearl’s been refining her sound, building Desert Queen into a watershed work. We’re all riding the crest of the wave with her, and the view from the top stretches on for miles. The new record arrives in April from her own Taurus Rising Records.