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Songbirds and beesBrooklyn’s Clare and the Reasons make
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Clare Muldaur’s honey-sweet vocals and fanciful chamber pop soundscapes may belie the sophistication of her compositions and her husband Olivier Manchon’s arrangements of brass, strings and woodwinds, but it’s that levity and wonder that make Clare and the Reasons so charming. Based in Brooklyn, Muldaur hails from Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where her mother is a schoolteacher. Her sister Jenni is a singer, who recently toured the world singing back-up for David Byrne, and her father Geoff Muldaur is a musician who plays what his daughter deems an unclassifiable blend of styles from the first half of the 20th century—she recommends his early ’70s albums on Warner, which are “way ahead of their time,” she says, and recorded during a period “when Warner Bros. used to support artistic things” (Clare and the Reasons are signed to Frog Stand Records, incidentally). During his long career, Geoff Muldaur crossed paths with legendary songwriter Van Dyke Parks, a mentor of sorts to Clare and Manchon. “Olivier and I moved to L.A. for a moment in the early 2000s and Van Dyke really took us under his wing,” she says. “He’d always hire Olivier to play on his film score stuff, he was just great, and of course a musical hero. He is so entirely his own entity, sonically. Whenever he does anything, it sounds just like him and I really appreciate that.” Clare and the Reasons will tour the West Coast with Parks next month, the third spurt of touring since the release of their second album, Arrow. Parks also appeared on their debut album, The Movie (as did Sufjan Stevens), while Arrow features My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden, adding luscious vocals to an already gorgeous record, albeit a smaller production than its predecessor. “It’s still a cousin, sonically, of the first record. I feel like it’s a little bit less precious, a little bit more up,” she says, alluding to lyrical motifs as well as musical ones. “We have two songs about bees on the new record, which is a total obsession of mine, a couple of songs about time which explore all aspects of that. “For me, a record should be absolutely connected to itself. The thing that I love about records is that they don’t try to be too much at once. I feel like it’s important to give the listener the respect of being able to put on a record for a certain reason, to feel certain things. No one record is perfect for all times, but hopefully this record can be perfect for somebody at a certain time.” While songs from The Movie were thoroughly worked out live during a year of regional touring prior to recording, Arrow was birthed in reverse. Largely developed in the studio, the new songs were translated to their live format by Muldaur, Manchon and their bandmate Bob Hart right before they hit the road in the fall. “It was such great fun to learn to make the songs work live,” says Muldaur. “For me, it was musically the most fun tour that I’ve done ’cause it was just so fresh. I feel like songs are kind of like people, you get baggage with them, so it was really nice to have new friends.” WITH NOUVELLE VAGUE AT L’ASTRAL |
