Start Listening To: Clara Mann

Clara Mann on finding light in life's fractures.

Clara Mann’s music feels like a conversation held at twilight - a space where emotions are raw, and the line between vulnerability and strength blurs. Rooted in the pastoral beauty of her upbringing in rural France and the Mendip Hills of England, Clara weaves "almost folk" melodies with deeply introspective lyrics that echo with universal truths. Her debut album, Rift, is a poignant exploration of life's fractures and the light that emerges through them.

In this Q&A, Clara opens up about the inspirations behind Rift, her creative process, and the tension between independence and vulnerability. From her admiration of Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel to the influence of ghost stories and her own visual art practice, Clara offers a glimpse into the thoughtful world she’s crafted - a world full of beauty, strength, and undeniable humanity.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make? 

I’m Clara! I’m from various bits of countryside where the dominant rock type is limestone, we moved around a few times when I was little, from a tiny village in France to a tiny village in the south-west of England. These days home is where my family have settled, in the Mendip hills. 

When I first started making music, I referred to it as “almost folk”- I guess it has it roots in old fashioned songwriting, folk music, and the kind of music one might make if one had pop aspirations but no dance moves or beats or money, just loads of feelings. 

Your debut album, Rift, explores themes of light and dark, growth and loss, and finding hope amid fractures. What was the inspiration behind the album's title, and how does it reflect the journey you’ve captured within?

Rift is such a beautiful word to me. I love the way it sounds, like the tearing of fabric, I love all its different meanings- referring to a rupture, an argument, or a fissure in a landscape caused by the movements tectonic plate. Whatever context I found it in, it made me think about fragments, and the things left behind after something violent.

The Rift became the name of the place I was in in my life, where things felt dark and empty and hopeless- I’d experienced huge emotional changes, relationships ending, painful, heavy things in my life and body- but whenever we talk about darkness, there is the implication of light, the absence of it necessitating its existence elsewhere, experienced or remembered. 

There is, in most of us, a survival instinct that says “even though there is no hope, I get up and try again”- and we hope to move towards that light.

Writing songs was a way of picking up the various pieces of my life and gathering them to me, and moving through the space, the Rift, even when was there was no obvious direction or light to follow. It was like stringing together a chain to hold onto as I walked. 

In “Driving Home The Long Way,” you talk about the balance between independence and vulnerability. How has this tension shaped your songwriting and personal growth over the years? 

Terrifying question! I really struggle to balance those things at all. I’m not good at practising  vulnerability in my day to day life, I guess that’s why I express it in songs, it’s the only language I have around it. I guess I’ve got better at saying “I don’t have to do this on my own.”, and at acknowledging that that’s not a sign of weakness. In terms of my songwriting, I think I hide a lot less than I used to- in earlier songs I think I used metaphor to obscure things more. I hope that these songs are more direct, less elusive.

You can definitely be both independent and vulnerable, though I think that we as women are encouraged to think that we have to choose- you’re either big and tough or small and expressive and emotional. I know that what I’d say to anyone else is-  you can do both. I’m still working on that for myself. The image I’d use to illustrate this growth is : me driving really fast on my own in my tiny little car, scream-crying. 

You’ve described your songwriting as “composting emotions.” Could you share how this metaphor applies to a specific track on the album? 

The final track on the record, The Dream, is the ultimate compost track, for me at least. It’s a “this is everything I didn’t know I was feeling” track- one of those ones that just happened to me. It’s full of images I’d collected inside me from the last year or so of my life, that had come to signpost moments of beauty and sadness. Watching swallows nest under the gutters of the high-rise building I’d spent many mornings in- new life, the changing seasons, the fragile, temporary nature of beautiful things… Images that marked me and were important, but that I needed to sit with until I knew what they really meant to me. 

Artists like Jacques Brel, Edith Piaf, and Judee Sill have influenced you deeply. How do their styles manifest in your music, and what draws you to their work?

I think I like a certain abrasive, memorable quality to a voice that makes you think “WHO is singing that?”. I like story telling, I like pictures, I like songs that take you on a journey. I like complicated people (to a fault), I like it when people are playful and funny about sad things.

In terms of songwriting, my favourite thing as a listener when people build little worlds that you can step into , even if they’re strange, foreign worlds. I’d like to think the album has the potential to do that, I’d like, through the music, for people to come and visit me in my world, like going on a really sad holiday.

Your lyrics are vivid and visceral, often telling rich stories. Do you typically begin writing with a specific narrative in mind, or do the themes emerge organically as you compose?

Thank you! 

No, I never start off with a narrative in mind- I’m more likely to start from specific imagery or a bunch of words that I feel resonate with me. I find hinge points in songs, like an image or a colour or a feeling, and then everything builds around that. Sometimes it’s a piece of spoken dialogue I’ve overheard, or something from a book… Usually I don’t know what a song is actually about until further down the line, about 3-4 working weeks later when I’ve left it for a while, and I listen back and thing “Oh, that was about this”. I think stories are incredibly powerful tools- the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and our work end up defining them for us- and I’d find writing inside one from the start claustrophobic.  

The production on Rift combines the intimacy of living room recordings with the polish of studio work. How did these contrasting settings influence the album’s tone? 

I think I always want the recordings to feel like they’re capturing a moment, a performance- so whatever the physical recording environment is, I have to feel really present and comfortable. It was easy in Tom Kellett’s living room, where I recorded Rift and It Only Hurts, because we were just hanging out, sitting on the sofa, chatting about Streatham Ice Hockey… the studio at 4AD, where Fab and I recorded the rest of it, is also a really warm, lovely environment, but his presence and way of working were what made it feel really not scary.

I guess the best example of that atmosphere is The Dream, the last track- I had real difficulty with the take, ei felt blocked and self conscious, I found it painful to relive the song every time, and I couldn’t get out of my head. In the end, Fab very quietly switched off all the lights in the studio except one little lamp by the piano. He he sat in the control room in the dark, and I played the song, and it immediately fell into place.

He understood something about capturing that moment, the privacy of the performance, how I had to feel completely alone. 

What I’m saying is: both in Tom’s living room and in Fab’s studio, regardless of the equipment we were using, what mattered was the space they made for me. I said to them both “I want it to feel like I’m a ghost speaking in your ear”. They said “say no more.”

You integrate your visual art practice into your music. How do drawing or painting complement your songwriting process, and do they ever inform one another directly?

The songs often begin as fragments of drawing and text, drawing is a very personal thing for me and tends to be more exploratory and private- I’ll usually be writing words down alongside the pictures themselves, those two mediums definitely inform one another and arrive simultaneously- and then the next time I pick up my guitar I’ll look back through the drawings to se if they spark anything, or if there are any recurring images or themes I feel speak to me enough to start to write music around them.

Your use of ink, charcoal, and watercolors suggests a preference for raw and tactile mediums. Does this mirror how you approach creating music, focusing on emotion and immediacy?

Yeah, I’d like to think so. I don’t know any other way, I clam up as soon as I start to overthink stuff. I find it easier to be intellectual in the production stages, or when I’m working on composition projects or to a brief, but when it comes to my own songwriting I have to feel like I’m exploring or discovering something musically or emotionally. 

You’ve toured with notable artists like Daniel Rossen and Billie Marten. What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from those experiences, and how have they influenced your own performances?

Yes! I’m very lucky, I’ve met some extraordinary people. You learn something different every time you tour, about yourself, about others. I usually find that I discover new resources inside myself, and learn new ways of being resilient. I love who I am on tour because I feel strong. 

I guess that in terms of performance I’ve observed that the best performances are vulnerable and authentic without being self indulgent. Mistakes don’t matter if you’re being honest, if you’re present with an audience. Sometimes, on a rough night, you might come off stage a complete mess, feeling exhausted and low- and often, those performances are the ones that strike an audience most, because you access something inside yourself  that is tender and breakables and it comes across really electric.

Much of Rift seems to be about finding beauty and strength in life’s imperfections. How has creating this album helped you come to terms with your own “fault lines”? 

I mean, I think coming to terms with one’s fault lines is a life’s work, really- but Rift was definitely a way of my acknowledging that I am neither all light nor or dark, and that I do have to learn to live with both parts of myself. Sometimes it’s easier to love other people than it is to love yourself, and so I look at others and I think “That person is beautiful and loving and also really messy and difficult- and I still love them”, and that makes it easier to accept those traits in myself. 

What do you love right now?

Ghost stories.

What do you hate right now?

My phone.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you? 

My Life, by Iris Dement. My mum used to play this CD in the car when my sister and I were little. It’s some of the best classic songwriting I’ve ever heard, that’s real storytelling. Her voice is so full of feeling and so direct. and  so funny. I’ve come back to it in the last few years, it makes me cry every time, and I’ll always associate it with my ma. “My Life” is our song.

With Rift set to release soon, what are you most excited for listeners to take away from the album? And looking beyond its release, are there new directions or projects you’re eager to explore?

I’d like people to feel that it’s a hopeful record. That matters to me.

I’m thinking about thing beyond the album, but only very quietly. Don’t want to “big things coming soon” you guys. I just want to keep writing, and maybe do some other types of singing. Singing is the best.