I’ve worked with Claire recently as we’ve tried to collaborate on a song of mine and we come from completely opposite perspectives. She has a lot of musical knowledge as a classically trained piano player and so approaches the musical side with a chord structure and then works out what notes can fit into those chords. I do it more by feel. Working together has been a brilliant breath of fresh air for me as my approach means I easily fall into habits of this note goes after that one; Claire’s approach means she has a subset of notes to choose from without relying on learned progressions.
Claire says “I grew up learning classical music from age 5-15, though I never learned to sing. There was no choice in the matter and I got out of it as soon as I could, but not before I had a great background in music. It has only been as an adult I have appreciated my parents insisting on my learning a s a child. Eternally grateful in fact. I only started singing at about age 30 when I realised I did actually like singing, and didn’t want to get to the end of my life and gone’what if?’ It was only a number of years later that I started to write songs. Then I didn’t know how to put it all together for a band to play. That’s when I went to the studio. I didn’t intend to make a cd, I went to learn, but the songs were actually sounding good when brought to life with all the instruments so I thought it would be a waste not to do anything with it.
‘Kiss This Thing Goodbye’ is the result.”
Nothing’s As It Seems is actually about all the emotions I experienced when I first listened to Radiohead’s album ‘OK Computer’ for the first time. It was quite a roller coaster of emotion and wonder at all these amazing songs! It resulted in me writing down some lyrics of my own but when it came to writing the melody the lyrics weren’t quite fitting so I corrupted them to what sounds like seduction, but isn’t. Hence the name.