Avalon Emerson returns to the Charm with new album ‘Written Into Changes’: ‘This time I had a confidence’

When Avalon Emerson emerged in 2023 with a debut album under her ‘& the Charm’ moniker, it was one of the most pleasantly surprising left-turns in recent memory. Having built a reputation as one of the world’s most consistently forward-thinking DJs and producers, Emerson mixed house, techno, punk and more to delirious crowds at Berghain, Glastonbury and beyond.

With the Charm, she showed herself as brilliantly adept at making indie-pop that brushed up against her dance music roots, but also showed a love for soft vocals and leant on her well-documented love for the Cocteau Twins.

On March 20, Emerson will release her second Charm album, Written Into Changes. It’s today being previewed by new single ‘Jupiter and Mars’, which was written together with Rostam. The new record sees the singer and producer taking the project to extremes – on the record is both the Charm’s most abrasive and heavy dance music yet, but also her most sparse and soul-baring songs too.

“People are very heterogeneous with how they listen to music these days, more than ever,” she tells Rolling Stone UK. “I think that’s one of the benefits of music now. Everyone listens to music primarily on these streaming platforms where you can have access to nearly every piece of recorded music at once. People like different kinds of music, and so they’re going to have a personal playlist of all kinds of different stuff. That means it’s OK to be really wide in the sonics even within one album.”

Ahead of the new album’s release, we spoke to Emerson about returning to work with producer Bullion alongside Rostam, the urge to return to her pop side-project, and why it opens up even more avenues for her musical future.

Watch the video for ‘Jupiter and Mars’ and read our interview with Avalon Emerson below.

It’s such a nice surprise to see your Charm project return for a second album – did you think that would always be the case?

There was a moment where I was unsure where it would go and what its future would be after the first album. Half way [through] making the first [album], I was like, ‘I love this. This is so fun’. I’d been like a professional musician for however many years at that point, and had not done this type of thing. I was like, ‘Oh, of course it’s gonna continue, and I love to do it’. I don’t see any reason to stop.

Was there ever a chance that this would just be a passion project that nobody would ever hear?

No, I release everything I make, basically. There’s so much music out there and so many artists out there, that it’s hard to surprise people these days. People liked it, and I liked making it. I’m blessed enough to  have this life on Earth, and so I should go for it.

After you released the album, did you see the experience and the new discipline reflect back onto your DJing and dance productions?

I definitely understand why people pick a lane and go with it. In my DJ world, I don’t really do that. At the beginning of my DJ career, it’s easier to be associated with either a sound or a label or a scene and be locked in that. But there’s also some rigidity in that. As a career goes on, you don’t want to be pigeonholed into DJing a certain kind of music or anything like that.  I play all kinds of stuff, and that wide reaching perspective knows no bounds for me. So of course I’d like to try to make stuff with a band and with other really talented musicians and expand my idea of songwriting beyond dance music.

How did the idea of a second album come about?

I made a lot of the first album songs in my bedroom, literally. It was during COVID and I wasn’t DJing, so the end result ended up being a lot of softer sounds, and a lot of quietness and intimacy was infused in the whole record. As we were touring it in 2023 and playing some bigger festival stages, you can only zhuzh them up so much for a bigger stage. I was like, ‘OK, let’s have a more heavy interlude, and that ended up eventually becoming the song ‘God Damn (Finito)’.

Right after we finished touring, I went back to London and had a few days with Nathan [producer Bullion], and we made [recent single] ‘Eden’ basically in a couple of sittings. I was like, ‘OK, cool – it wasn’t a one off, and I still love doing this, and there’s a new album potentiality.

Was it a different pressure than the first album, when people didn’t even know this side of you existed?

I’ve read interviews with some other artists over the years, and it’s like, you spend the first part of your career before you launch as an artist, making your first album, and that’s a collection of songs over many years. Then the second album task comes, and you’re like, ‘OK, now I have to do it all again, starting from close to zero, and it’s harder’.

Can you tell us about the process of lyric writing for the first time on the first Charm album, and whether it was easier to write this time around?

It was totally easier. This time I had a confidence, and also a desire to be better at it. I also found my voice in a physical sense and also a thematic lyrical sense. I’ve nailed down a bit more of my own personal process of how to write lyrics, and feeling a little more confident to be a little less abstract, a little less wool gathering, and more concrete. When I think about writing a song, I have a pretty clear idea of what it’s about. But maybe on the first record, I was leaning a little bit more into the abstract, and I wanted to be a little more upfront with this record.

The next single from the album is ‘Jupiter and Mars’, out today – can you tell us about working with Rostam on this song?

I haven’t made music with a ton of people in this songwriting way – the collaborations that I had done before were always pretty asynchronous, sending stems back and forth with somebody making dance music, or I’m making a remix, and they’ve already written a whole song and I’m doing something after the fact. I had written a lot with Bullion, who is very open – everything’s a good idea. I was unsure about working with somebody else, especially someone so storied and successful and big time.

Rostam really made it feel very welcoming. He’s such a funny and smart guy that I felt like I could also be really nerdy and weird. It was really cool to go really deep with someone who’s such a master at the craft. It felt great and I loved working with him.

Does the making of this album, and the Charm as a whole, feel like it’s opened you up to more exploration as your career continues?

Totally. That’s the dream scenario for any artist, where you feel like you have an open green field and it doesn’t feel stagnant or pigeonholed or like you’re in a box. I try to follow the threads that lead me towards that open-ended excitement.