It’s an amusingly strange introduction to Mann. Yet it’s a fitting introduction for a conversation that moves from puppet theatres to French cinema and a left-field dive into the mysterious life of Connie Converse. Mann gives thoughtful answers to it all but rarely seems interested in giving the neat answer when there is a more interesting one to be found. This becomes apparent when asked how she would describe her music to someone who had never heard it before. Rather than pigeon-holing herself with a genre, Mann settles on something more personal. “It's very tenderhearted. It is for the tenderhearted, or those who wish their hearts were made more tender.”
What she wants to achieve through her music is harder to pin down. “I don't even know if I'm trying to do anything consciously apart from evoke some kind of feeling. It's about connection and to be understood.” She pauses, then adds: “I still write music for myself. I like to think I would be doing it if there was no audience because that was originally what I was doing. But it makes me happy to be able to share it with people.”
Connection comes up repeatedly. Mann has spent much of her career performing alone, and songwriting remains a similarly solitary process. Everything starts with just her and either a piano or guitar. “Everything is written by just me on my own with piano or guitar. When I know that song is strong enough that I can play it on my own and it stands up, I bring it to the studio.” There is a sense, though, that Mann is becoming more comfortable with letting people into the process — or at least what happens after a song has been written. Her sophomore album, ‘Wishbone’, is more expansive than 2021’s ‘Rift’, bringing in additional musicians. She sees this partly as a musical decision, but also as revealing something about herself. “I guess that the fact I wanted more musicians to play on this was a mark of being okay with surrendering some control and also more confidence.”
That surrender has continued on stage, ahead of a tour to support her new album. “Yeah, it's the first time I play with a band. I had played with other musicians, but never with a full band. And it is so much fun. I’m having the best time.” That doesn’t mean she’s finished with playing solo, far from it. “I definitely love playing solo still, always will. It's so different to touring with friends.”
Playing with other people has altered the experience in ways she wasn’t necessarily expecting: “Playing with friends and touring with friends is somehow a much more normal experience. You feel much less detached from your real life.” More interestingly, it also changed her relationship with the songs themselves. During rehearsals, viola player Laura began playing one of Mann’s older songs and “at the end of the song I just stopped and I was like, ‘Whoa, I’m feeling really overwhelmed actually’.” It wasn't simply the sound of the viola but “remembering how I was and who I was when I wrote that song and how it felt — her playing really brought that up in me.” Mann wonders whether playing alone had made it easier to keep some of those emotions at a distance. “Maybe I can hide those things more easily when it's all on my terms; it's just me playing.”
Some of ‘Rift’ was written when Mann was just nineteen. If that record was more questioning, ‘Wishbone’ feels more certain. The growing confidence is particularly apparent in two songs: ‘Oblivion’ and ‘Wishbone’. “For me, they are the weightier songs on the album and the more adult songs as well, in terms of writing confidence, production, and lyrics. ‘Wishbone’ in particular is a song of release and exaltation for me, and it's very uninhibited.”
‘Oblivion’ is about the point at which falling in love ceases to feel like a choice. “There was a point at which, looking back, falling in love, I could have chosen something else. I could have chosen not to do this or commit a different way or love this person differently. And I don't remember ever standing at that crossroads — I don't recall making a conscious decision; it was kind of inevitable.“
Surrendering control, allowing other musicians into her songs, falling in love: these are recurring themes of our conversation. But Mann isn’t one-dimensional: “I’m happy to be someone who can write a very, very sad sort of song, feel very big sad, scary things, and also to be someone who can experience great joy, you know, to not have a limit on the depth of my feeling.”
Mann is drawn to artists who are also unmistakably themselves, from Fiona Apple and Tom Waits to Connie Converse. “I think I’m drawn to very distinctive voices.” Converse, in particular, became something of a minor obsession: “I went down a rabbit hole, reading everything I could find that she had online. Every record that we had left of her writing or old recordings, I just listened to everything, and I wrote ‘Connie’s Song’, partly for her. She has such a weird, distinctive voice; it’s so haunting, and the songs are so, so complex, and so melodic. So I love her.” Among contemporary artists Mann also names Audrey Hobert, whose writing she describes as “mind-blowingly witty and intricate”. Her influences aren’t confined to music. While making ‘Wishbone’ she found herself increasingly absorbed by cinema, particularly French films including The Lovers on the Bridge and Betty Blue: “I think this album was very film-heavy for me. Previously, maybe, things would be more kind of fine-art, painting-heavy. That's what I grew up with. And this was definitely more film-influenced."
For all the thoughtful replies and emotional sincerity, Mann is funny too — something she admits doesn’t always make it into her songs. One exception is ‘Everyone Who’s Ever Said I Love You’, written during a dark period in Mann’s life: “Looking back, the song is quite bitter and sarcastic. I put that song aside for like nearly a year. I'm an extremely sincere person, so this felt quite jarring to me. But I like humorous music, and I like hearing people's actual personalities in the music. I'm British, you know, I make loads of ironic, sarcastic, self-deprecating comments!”
There are signs that Mann may be ready to surprise herself more often. She feels that ‘Rift’ and ‘Wishbone’ belong to the same sonic world and one she is ready to move beyond: “I definitely feel ready to challenge myself writing-wise. How different that will look to everyone else versus how different it will be to me. I don't know. But I feel really excited about writing.”
For now, Mann is looking forward to releasing ‘Wishbone’ to the world and touring with her band. The puppet theatre may or may not work out, Clara Mann, though, seems ready to see where everything else takes her.
Andrew Butcher
Image: Courtesy of Press