Meet Clara Mann, the singer finding hope and acceptance from despair

Clara Mann had many other dreams before becoming a songwriter. Growing up in the south of France before moving to Somerset in her teens, the singer thought of working in art galleries as a curator, or a French translator.

Inspired to pick up a guitar by her time spent soaking up the welcoming and accessible DIY music scene in Bristol, she started playing music and writing songs as an exercise in fun, but it soon became an outlet for her emotions, a way to break through difficult transitional periods.

“I just found this thing where I was like, ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to do this whole time’,” she reflects now. “This is my thing. It was amazing, and I suddenly I realised that this is something I can do, and that I feel like no one else can do like me. I think a lot of people feel like that when they become musicians or artists, but I was like, ‘Wow, this is what I should have been doing the whole time’. It was a real life change.”

Last week, she released debut album Rift via the state51 label, a gorgeous and hushed album powered by acoustic guitar, piano and Mann’s stunning and distinctive voice. It tackles the process of holding onto faith in seemingly hopeless situations, unlocking a resilience and strength you didn’t know you possessed.

A regular collaborator, Mann also plays as part of the folk collective Broadside Hacks, most recently appearing at the Lexington in London as part of their Bob Dylan tribute, playing a number of songs including a gorgeous and haunting rendition of ‘A Hard Rain’s A‐Gonna Fall’.

Of making and releasing her debut album, and the confidence it’s given her, Mann says: “It’s made me feel like I want to invest myself wholly into every part of this, because it really lights me up. It makes me feel 3D and witnessed. It makes me feel alive.”

Watch the video for ‘Doubled Over’ and read our Play Next interview with Clara Mann below.

Does your debut album feel like a representation of your entire life in songwriting so far?

I only started writing when I was 18. I’m 23 now, so I’m still at the beginning of my journey in a sense, but I definitely don’t feel like that as much anymore. When I first started writing the album, I was like, ‘I’m on the beginning of my journey’ and I felt underconfident about the fact that I felt like songs just come to me and I can’t make them happen. That’s just obviously not true. There is a part of that where you have to be open to things that come in and receive them, but being receptive is a practice as well. Writing bad things is a practice, and it’s good, because unless you’re engaging in that process, you’re not going to be open to those things.

The album was written in stolen bits of time, and it hadn’t been from the beginning a conscious decision of me making my body of work. It was just a part of my life. It was the tapestry of my life. Evenings in my room or evenings in a hotel somewhere.

What was the process of recording with Fabian Prynn at London’s 4AD Studios like, and how did it impact the album?

It was recorded over a scatted amount of time – a day here, an evening there –but in a way that felt quite true to the way that I wrote it. It put way less pressure on me in the studio and meant that I had a lot of time to listen back to things and to think, ‘I really like that, I don’t like that’. Fab understands the point of capturing a performance and a moment and a feeling in the room, rather than just a voice or instrument.

He understood atmosphere and how that could be captured in a recording, and how much that was about the person feeling able to express [themselves] and be in the space. When I arrived in the studio, we’d giggle or chat or gossip, and then we just made something. It felt like a very holistic process.

Is that atmosphere – laughing and having fun – the one you wanted to capture on the album? Is it hard to convey that when a lot of the songs are emotionally fraught and down-tempo?

People forget that people who are very expressive and fun and funny can make very sad music. I feel like I’m quite an extroverted person, and I kept finding myself trapped – in my head as well as by other people ­– into a passive, airy-fairy, ethereal, fragile role. That’s just not how I am as a person. The songs for me are about strength and expression, so it was important to be able to just be myself, be silly, and then come back down and settle into myself. You have to go all the way up and be really, really silly in order to come back down to the valley where you’re making something serious and authentic.

Every artist has a trope that they’re trying to escape. It’s especially hard for women and is viewed through a gendered lens, but I understand why people have that view of me, because the music is very sad. It’s also full of other things.

Rift is an important and representative word for the themes of the album, as well as its title – can you explain why?

The word rift struck me because it refers to an argument or falling out, but also when tectonic plates move, and the gaps that are left. I had this image of that cracking, that fragmentation, and realised that it was part of the album. It was about trying to love something in my life when it had been blown apart, or I’d blown it apart. It’s about trying to reassemble that and be like, ‘I love this in its new shape, and I accept it’. It’s like when you break a bowl and you’re like, ‘It’s never going to be the same, but that’s OK and I love it as it is now’.

The rift itself became a metaphor for this valley, which was a very dark, mostly sad, very empty place in my life where I felt like I just had nothing to hold onto. I felt completely alone, even though maybe I wasn’t – I don’t know, I can’t remember. But that feeling I remember, the feeling of, ‘There’s nothing I recognise. There’s nothing to hold onto. There’s not even anger or sadness, because those are familiar things that I could maybe hold onto. I just feel nothing.’

What is the album’s title track reflecting on through this process of struggle?

It’s about finding out that there is something in me that makes me get up and keep going every time. It’s like an insane spark of faith that we have. I think I have a lot of faith. Not necessarily religious, but I have a lot of faith, and it makes you keep moving. It’s like driving through a dark valley. I can’t see lights ahead, but I just have to keep going. I don’t have a choice. I know that if I stop, I’ll never get out, so I just have to keep going.

I don’t think there’s any song [on the album] that’s like, ‘Yes, I’m fixed’. It’s more about accepting the journey. I stopped hating the parts of myself that are dark and sad, and realised that I just have to live with this. I accept it. It’s about acceptance.

How has your time playing and listening to traditional folk music contributed to your songwriting and overall appreciation of music?

It’s really evocative music. I love the stories and this sense that you’ll hear words and lyrics put against different melodies, and you’ll think, ‘How did that happen?’ It’s because they travelled across the ocean in a boat with people 200 years ago, and then they were put against new tunes that existed on the Appalachian Mountains, and then they came all the way back, and now they’re playing in the pub in London. To me, that’s the most beautiful, mind-blowing thing.

Can it also provide a link to a more positive corner of English history, when fewer and fewer young people here – especially in the creative industries – feel proud of their heritage?

In England, we have really lost touch with the importance of those songs, because we’ve never had to fight for anything, not in hundreds of years. We’ve never had something that we felt we were going to lose. If you go over to Ireland, obviously there’s a much more palpable sense of what’s at risk culturally, but it’s not thought of as radical music here [in England]. In fact, it has much more conservative ideas around it. But actually, the music is the music, songs matter, preserving those songs and passing them down matters. It’s a beautiful community to build.