Like many Los Angeles natives, Charlotte Lindèn Ercoli Coe is in the movie industry. But ever since high school, her work as a videographer has been intertwined with music; supposedly she started learning to play instruments so she could exercise full creative control over her film projects. Ercoli’s relatively sparse IMDB page includes acting in a Neon Indian video and directing one for Weyes Blood, and along the way she started releasing music under the name Charles. Though the bulk of the recordings on her Bandcamp page date back to the middle of last decade, including debut album That’s How Baby Learns. But now it seems her music career is in full swing.

A second Charles full-length called Let’s Start A Family Tonight is out in May, six years after the first one. The new LP features such intriguing and/or eyebrow-raising song titles as “I Must Spread My Genes,” “The Offended Olympics,” “Impudent Hussy,” “A Trans Person,” and “I Know You Love Me, But Do You Think Of Me, Romantically.” None of those are the lead single, though. That would be “Rex Harrison,” a love song that presents an extremely winsome blend of chillwave and bedroom-pop sounds. Against a wash of low-budget keyboard and drum machine sounds, Ercoli’s voice morphs from a moody soprano into something deeper and darker. “I don’t even know how to talk to you,” she swoons, in multiple registers. “When you look at me I don’t know what to do.”

In a statement, Charles explained the song’s genesis:

My whole life, My Fair Lady has had a tremendous impact on me. Primarily musically. Several songs on the record were inspired by the lyricism and music of André Previn (who is an absolute ruthless pimp on the string arrangement front). Strangely while writing and recording the album I experienced love at first sight with someone who looks and embodies Rex Harrison to me in every possible way. An English Ivy League gentleman with dark Harrison wit. It was a remarkably horrible time in my life but through the joy he has brought me I feel I’ve had my own Pygmalion transformation. This song was a painful confession of how I felt for him before I felt I was allowed to express it. I am forever grateful.

Hear “Rex Harrison” below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Remember Blushing”
02 “Fallogentrismo”
03 “I Know You Love Me, But Do You Think Of Me, Romantically”
04 “The Courtesy Bath”
05 “Impudent Hussy”
06 “Rex Harrison”
07 “One Spring Evening”
08 “Your Girls 1996”
09 “I Must Spread My Genes”
10 “The Offended Olympics”
11 “Romantic Claymation”
12 “A Trans Person”
13 “I’m Going To Get Fired Tonight”

Let’s Start A Family Tonight is out 5/21 on Babe City. Pre-order it here.