Bristol singer-songwriter Clara Mann has released her debut EP, Consolations, via Sad Club Records. Recorded with producer Benjamin Spike-Saunders and mastered by Alice Western, the four-track project feautres the previously released singles ‘Thoughtless’ and ‘I Didn’t Know You Were Leaving Today’ as well as the newly unveiled ‘Station Song’ and ‘Waiting for the Flight’. Take a listen below.
A classically trained musician, Mann grew up in a small Catholic village in the South of France. “I grew up with classical music all around me, from choral pieces to chamber music,” she explains in a statement. “I teach piano now, and after a lesson once I picked up the Liszt Consolations, which I remember my ma playing when I was little. The music was open on the piano one day over summer, and I just thought it reflected everything I felt about this collection of songs: the act of consoling, the influence of my childhood and the landscapes I grew up in, classical music. It struck me as such a beautiful word- and it’s also what music is, to my mind, meant to do- to console. Writing this EP has been a way of consoling myself through any hard times, and I’d like it to do the same for other people!”
Speaking about the inspiration behind ‘Station Song’, Mann says “it captured a particular moment in my life, a particular atmosphere. It’s a lonely song, about moving to the city and feeling detached from the people around me, about mourning the ease of a distant quiet life, and the uncomplicated relationships that punctuated it.”
“Station Song is a three part story-a party, an absence, and a reunion- unfolding as I begin to realise that some things, some relationships, are simply not meant to last forever,” she added. “Reluctantly, I recognise my unwillingness to let them go, and pay respect to the joy they have brought me through the years, in difficult and lonely times.”
