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’Sco Welcomes Maximum Capacity for Coco & Clair Clair Concert

Jenny Rowlett

Last Friday night, the ’Sco welcomed iconic Atlanta pop duo Coco & Clair Clair and easily reached its new 300-person capacity. While many students have expressed disappointment over the ’Sco’s meager Splitchers attendance, the concert’s stellar turnout suggests campus attitudes toward the ’Sco are changing, reaffirming its integral role in College nightlife.

Hailing from the suburbs of Atlanta, singers Taylor Nave and Claire Toothill originally connected over Twitter and decided to formally found Coco & Clair Clair after singing together at a house party. Shortly after, the duo began publishing original music over SoundCloud, where lo-fi hits like “Bugs” and “Pretty,” which flaunt rarefied celebrity lifestyles and wild nights out in East Atlanta, first started attracting media attention. One of their most recent singles, “Pop Star,” was released in 2020 and has become a favorite on TikTok.

While the young artists mostly label their discography as pop music, they’re wary of confining themselves to one genre. In an interview with Pure Nowhere, the band defines their music as “demon glam rock,” but Toothill quickly interjects, saying, “We don’t hold back; … sonically, it’s pop but with the energy you typically get in rap. It’s a mix.”

The duo’s nonconformity seemed to resonate with Oberlin’s value of breaking out of societal labels.

College third-year Tali Braun, who started booking artists as a promoter for the ’Sco this summer, observed that many students were thrilled when they learned that Coco & Clair Clair were coming to campus.

“I heard a lot of buzz the day before, which was super cool,” Braun said.

It was the first concert this academic year that took place in the ’Sco, and students turned up in droves. At one point, the staff even had to send students away.

Atlanta rap duo Coco & Clair Clair performed for a packed ’Sco on Oct. 22.

Photo by Joaquim Stevenson-Rodriguez

Creative Writing Professors Discuss Origins of Their Careers

Continued from page 11 and through lines that she was seeing. Her suggestions for the structure were much more sophisticated and smart than what I had previously been doing, and I feel they added so much to the book and made it more cohesive.

I feel like a lot of what Lynn does in nonfiction teaching is help people figure out how to structure things. I feel like that’s so much of the work — it’s not just how you tell the story, but also how you structure the story. How do you make sure the important stuff comes to light? I see a lot of parallels there.

How much of your work from the beginning of your life as a writer enters your published work — enters the truth that you are able to access now, as distinguished writers in the world? How much do you feel like you’re actively collecting and repurposing truths and pieces of thought and work that you have with you from when you first started?

ER: I was interested in writing from a young age, and I think to some extent I was always doing it on my own. I had two older sisters who were taking up a lot of space because they were older and more assertive than I was. I think it was sort of my way of retreating into myself as the youngest child. As a teenager, I was a really serious musician and also a dancer. Those pursuits are much more outward and much more visible because you’re always doing performances and working with other people. That’s the kind of the direction I thought I was headed in college; I got here as a double-degree student. I was in the Conservatory for classical guitar, and then decided pretty quickly that I didn’t want to be a concert musician. I have terrible stage fright and At least 400 people attended the event over the course of the night.

Another ’Sco promoter, College fourth-year Joaquim Stevenson-Rodriguez, told the Review, “We had a much better turnout than expected. We were expecting quite a big show, but the line around the corner before the doors opened was a nice surprise.”

Inside the concert, students danced with their friends and met new people. Students enjoyed listening to Coco & Clair Clair and singing along to their songs with friends.

“Their song ‘Pretty,’ I think is one of their most popular songs. My friend and I didn’t realize we knew all the lyrics randomly, and [the event] was super fun,” Braun said.

College second-year Lila Liebeskind had a different experience at the concert.

“It was pretty wild,” they said. “I think a couple people fell over. There was a [mosh] pit and a lot of tall people were in it, so it felt kind of intimidating. I don’t think I actually heard their music over the sounds of other people.”

Even if the music couldn’t always be heard, Stevenson-Rodriguez said, “[It was] nice to see so much energy from the crowd, Coco & Clair Clair, and to watch them feed off of each other.”

Whenever musical groups are brought to campus to perform, students often do not see the work that goes on behind the scenes. ’Sco bookers are responsible for securing hotel accommodations for the artists, making sure the green room is set up, reserving the venue, and coordinating with concert sound.

Since many first-years and second-years are new to the ’Sco, the staff hope that the lively and fun atmosphere that the ’Sco had before COVID-19 will continue to come back as the year progresses. The ’Sco has an event next Saturday featuring Kari Faux, a rapper from Arkansas.

I was like, “Why am I going to put myself in a position where I’m going to be doing this all the time and I’m going to be graded on it?” I loved studying music. I loved thinking about music and playing with people, but it wasn’t for me. I started writing again after that as a different way of trying to be expressive. I’d always been very interested in language, so it was kind of a natural progression. All my musical knowledge and training informed my writing as well, in both direct and indirect ways.

LP: I think writers mature at different ages. Someone who’s gone to Oberlin has been part of a real writing community and is experienced in workshops. As a college student, I had known one poet and taken one creative writing class. When I set out for graduate school, I had never been north of the Mason-Dixon line and had rarely been out of Tennessee. I had a lot of growing up to do and a lot to learn about the literary and academic culture I was entering.

The poems I wrote in college and graduate school were not mature work for a variety of reasons. Yes, they were feisty, and a little racey. And a few of the poems were published in journals —one of the little poems even made it into my first book. But overall, it was not sophisticated work. I hadn’t looked at those poems in decades when I found them in an old file, dug them out, and read them just out of curiosity. At first, I was horrified. But the more time I spent with the work, the more I could see the inklings of the poet I am now. I could see the beginnings of my preoccupations in both style and subject. I even wrote a playful poem in homage to that old work, “Poem Beginning with Lines by Lynn Powell age 22,” which I read at our reading on Monday.