It’s all about the voice. A big, blues belter of a voice, a voice that’s lived a little, that knows things, that hints huskily of hidden mysteries. It was the voice that drew people in, when they heard its siren call over MySpace, and producers who got in touch asking for guest vocals were always surprised to find that it belonged to a slip of a girl from a large Irish family in Birmingham.
By day, she worked in shops, bars and restaurants in order to earn enough money to move to London and work on her music. By night, she sat up making connections on MySpace, eventually pulling in an extraordinary 1.5 million hits to hear the rough demos she had posted on her page. After a few months of obsessive all-night clicking, producers and artists began to get in touch, asking her to work with them, and she began to commute to the capital, staying in grim B&Bs, sleeping on floors, making contacts and learning her craft as a writer and a singer.
It was lonely at times, she says, and depressing. “But never once did I think, ‘That’s not going to happen.’ Ever since I was a child, this is what I’ve been going to do.” Fierce competition erupted, with Universal signing her at the age of 20, The next two years were spent followed were two years of travelling, writing, recording and searching for a sound that felt right for her. In LA, she met Rick Rubin, In New York, Jay Z invited her for drinks in his restaurant and told her she had star quality: he could see it in her eyes. Other people offered her songs – Jarvis Cocker, for instance, and Plan B.
Though grateful for all of it, she continued working alone until eventually finding the right collaborator in Fraser T Smith (whose credits includes Britney, Cee-Lo, Tinchy Stryder, Ellie Goulding and James Morrisson), the songs on Light After Dark came quickly. Most took just a day to write; in some, the vocals were recorded in the first take, capturing them while they were still raw and real. You’ll hear mournful echoes of the Irish music Clare grew up with on this album, hints of all the artists that influenced her: the Celtic vibes of Sinead O’Connor, the powerful vocals of Annie Lennox, the quirky innovations of Kate Bush, the soul of Johnny Cash. But mostly, you’ll hear a iconic new singer with a sound that’s all her own. As she’s always said, it’s all about the voice.
