Clara Mann has been building towards her debut album with a trail of devastating singles for a while now. Well, we now have Rift, the full-length from the London-based songwriter, and it’s a knockout.
Mann’s cut-glass voice has always been a perfect vessel to deliver her tales of woe and struggle, but also minor tribulations, and she knows that she doesn’t need to adorn it with too much instrumentation; she doesn’t want to hide. Instead, the minimal guitar or piano help to firmly trace the contours of the emotion being sung about, indenting them softly but indelibly in the heart of the listener. Across the 10 tracks of Rift, she brings scars to bear in ways that leave you in no doubt about their truthfulness and that she has lived in them.
Having been fans of Mann for a long time, it’s an honour that she agreed to give us a track-by-track run down of the record, which you can dive into below.
- “It Only Hurts”
I wrote this two days after a break-up- a rare piece of cathartic writing for me, usually I write about things after I’ve processed them, rather than writing my way through them. I love the synth part on this, a sort of constant whirring, like being dizzy- that’s how the world feels when you’re hurting, it’s disorienting.
- “‘Til I Come Around”
This, for me, is quite a dark, hopeless song, about the power of intimacy, how it can be the most beautiful thing in the world or the thing that tears us apart. I associate this song with a feeling of desolation, of scorched earth.
- “Driving Home The Long Way”
On the merrier end of the record! I wrote this about the joy of driving, specifically in my Nissan Micra (2004, grey. Perfect.). I’m joking a bit but also not completely. Fairly self explanatory, I think.
- “Stadiums”
“Stadiums” is about loving someone who has another great love, i.e. a creative passion- in this case, music. It feels like having a third person in the room, and it’s also the thing that draws you to that person, the elusive nature of someone’s creativity being something I find completely magnetic.
It is hard loving someone who loves their art – but I guess I’m maybe one of those people, who’s great passion and driving force is creative, so maybe, sometimes, it’s hard to love me, too.
- “Reasons”
I grew up in a family of people who love language, and now I sometimes find that I actually have too many words – I used to think that being able to name a feeling meant that I could process it, but actually, I just covered things up with all my words, trying to escape feeling the feelings at all. It catches up with you. Music and pictures help me understand my feelings – here, over a hot city summer, when I felt stuck and stifled, I tried to stop myself retreating into language, but rather face things head on.
- “Remember Me (Train Song)”
I feel guilty about a lot of things that I’ve done wrong, or even just things I could have done better, and about the bad parts of myself that I struggle to love. This is about two flawed, loving people, trying to face each other honestly, and say “I see all those parts of you, I know you, let me love you”. Beautiful things and memories sit next to the painful, fractured parts of us, and make up the fabric of human relationships- and even when we walk away from someone, those things live in us forever.
- “Doubled Over”
This is about how heartbreak feels like being punched in the stomach. That is all.
- “Rift”
The title track, the song that made me feel like I knew what I was doing with this album, and that it, and I, had direction.
It’s hard to write about; I don’t want to over explain it, I guess, but it’s also that I find it hard to talk about: it’s one of the songs on the record that still really affects me emotionally. It’s about home and growing up, and the various ‘points of no return’ that mark the path between childhood and adulthood. It’s about the loneliness of independence. It’s about my mamma’s garden.
- “Oranges”
Written at the end of a relationship, clutching at straws. I had just gone back to visit the village I grew up in in France, and was struck by the heaviness of the visit, and the weight of trying to preserve things as they once were.
There’s also sense of sacrifice: “in the end, it’s little death, for another golden morning in your arms”; that I look back on and think: sometimes you have to put things down, let them be.
- “The Dream”
I refer to this as an ‘everything song’- because it’s about all the little pieces of my life, images and moments, that have mattered to me in the last few years. It features tapes, bottles, a paperweight – things that hold other things, like this song and this record hold my world, and I hold the whole thing in my hand, and I try to love it just as it is.
Rift is out now via State51 (stream/purchase). Follow You can follow Clara Mann on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram.
She has these live dates ahead:
05.04.25 – Printemps Festival, Toulon, FR
12.04.25 – Wanderfal Festival, Falmouth, UK
22.04.25 – Bristol Beacon, Bristol, UK
23.04.25 – Stoke Newington Church, London, UK
30.04.25 – Castle Hotel, Manchester, UK
01.05.25 – Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, UK
15.05.25 – Unitarian Church, The Great Escape Festival, Brighton, UK
16.05.25 – Wood Festival, Oxfordshire
05.06.25 – Marche Gare, Lyon, FR
06.06.25 – Petit Bain, Paris, Fr
07.06.25 – Le Tetris, Le Havre, FR
10.06.25 – B72, Vienna, AU (with Youth Lagoon)
11.06.25 – Meetfactory, Prague, CZ (with Youth Lagoon)
12.06.25 – Frannz, Berlin, GER (with Youth Lagoon)
13.06.25 – Helios 37, Cologne, GER (with Youth Lagoon)
17.06.25 – Trabendo, Paris, FR (with Youth Lagoon)
18.06.25 – TRIX, Antwerp, BEL (with Youth Lagoon)
19.06.25 – Islington Assembly Hall, London, UK (with Youth Lagoon)
