REVIEW: Clara Mann – Rift

It only took me a few seconds of Clara Mann’s debut album to know I was on to a winner. Rift opens with ‘It Only Hurts’, and the way she sings the opening line about a last kiss was enough to convince that she has a lot of the ingredients I look for in this kind of music. By the time she gets to the song’s standout lines – ‘I’m telling you in tongues/if loving you’s so wrong/then I will live in shame’ – the song has done enough to make me very excited for the nine songs that follow. The haunting, ethereal vocal is reminiscent of artists like Aldous Harding, but the song is something all Clara’s own. The simplicity of the guitar only adds to it.

The opener is so good, that only a few songs match or surpass it. Even if ‘Til I Come Around’ is not one of them, it’s definitely enough to keep up this early captivation. While the music is gentle, the instrumentation basic, there’s an ache in the vocals and lyrics that can’t help but be intriguing. A slightly more upbeat guitar signals the start of ‘Driving Home The Long Way’, a song that seems to mix nostalgia and hope with the melancholy. There is an involving story being told here, and her voice is at its clearest so far.

The power of her voice becomes ever clearer on ‘Stadiums’ as we only have the most basic of piano lines to accompany it. In many ways the quietest moment of the album, but there is something in the way she barrels towards the chorus that lifts this song a little higher than most. Easy to imagine this as the centerpiece of her live show.

For an album that starts so well, it’s almost surprising that the second half features so many of the standout moments. ‘Remember Me (Train Song)’ is another that will appeal to Aldous fans – at heart, a straightforward acoustic number with some barely there percussion. But the way she unfolds the vocal line works so well with the story she tells her.

But it’s the run of ‘Doubled Over’, ‘Rift’, and ‘Oranges’ that really marks this album as something special. Clara’s choruses are minimal, barely even really choruses, but on all of these songs there is something so involving about the way she switches into them – she takes you on a journey through the verses before offering the slightest release. Title song ‘Rift’ is probably the absolute standout in all respects, but the way she sings the line ‘and there was a rift’ is what really elevates it.

Overall, it’s an album of small moments – of quiet songs. Of pent-up emotions released through miniscule changes in the scale and scope of the songs. It’s haunting, involving, and exciting all at once – Clara Mann keeps you on edge with her songs, while also letting you fully sink into them. A debut that makes me instantly sure I will be listening to her for years to come.

Words by Fran Slater