Planet Claire: Claire Welles Interview

DIY musician Claire Welles, who has released well over a dozen self-recorded and self-released albums recently issued Nincompoop, the best distillation of her wayward pop songs to date. Nerve met up with her for an interview.

By Richard Lewis - 8/1/2012

The practice of musicians recording and releasing their own work without the framework of a record company has a long and venerable past. Credited by many with inadvertently inventing the DIY aesthetic, Appalachian musician Hasil Adkins, creator of the form that became known as psychobilly, helmed dozens of albums utilising the same reel-to-reel tape deck home studio set-up from the 1950s up until the mid noughties.

In turn fellow countryman R. Stevie Moore has recorded and self-released in excess of 400 albums on cassettes and CD-Rs from the 1960s to the present day to a slowly burgeoning international audience.

Plotting a similarly idiosyncratic course one-woman pop polymath Claire Welles and her catalogue of twenty-nine albums lags further behind in the An Album for Each Day of the Year stakes, but with only 15 years of recorded work under her belt this is entirely understandable.

Sat in Mello Mello the scene of her most recent gig imbibing coffee Huyton-born Claire is unfazed at the vast number of albums she has created. ‘On average I do one or two a year, nowadays I do one proper one and couple of more experimental ones. When I was younger I’d sometimes do three or four a year. There wasn’t much editing going on, it was just sort of ‘Whatever’, she shrugs, smiling.

Citing Todd Rundgren, David Bowie, late-period Roxy Music, and an infatuation with Pulp as primary influences, Claire’s latest opus, the charmingly off-kilter Nincompoop is possibly the strongest collection of her career thus far.

A thirteen track cornucopia of fuzzy indie pop, macabre Kurt Weill waltzes, piano led balladry and musique concrete, several songs achieve the trick of managing to winningly combine almost all of the above.

Veering between the Sefton Park dub of ‘Yibble Shakey’, music hall knees-up ‘Gymslip’ and the somnambulistic stumble of Syd Barrett tribute ‘Bumblebee Feet’, all underline Claire’s supreme ability to dabble in widely differing genres.

Elsewhere the skewed melodicism of relatively straightforward cuts such as ‘Without Further Goodbye’, led by piano and vocal harmonies and ‘Ivories to Your Ovaries’, (possibly the sound of Kate Bush if she had swapped the keys for a guitar at an early age) co-exist alongside more left-field material such as the Revolution 9-esque ‘Isle of Thirty’.

Tackling ‘Guitar, bass, drums, piano, violin and a bit of cello as well’, any self-imposed limitations to simplify the songs is jettisoned in favour of essaying whatever material Claire feels drawn to.

Given her early start in music, recording her first album after receiving a 4-track cassette recorder as a 14th birthday present, it comes as no surprise that Claire grew up in a musical household. ‘My Dad was in a band in the Eighties in Liverpool called Neuklon’ Claire explains.

The post-punk ensemble piloted by her Dad Lloyd were regulars at Eric’s, securing a high profile support slot early in their career backing Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in February 1980. Taking their name from the David Bowie instrumental, the electronic act were described in 1979 by Liverpool music legend Roger Eagle as ‘the future of rock n’ roll’.

Landing the OMD gig via a recommendation by future founder of The La’s Mike Badger, Neuklon featured a young Lee Mavers on bass guitar between 1980-84, his time in the group running parallel with his activity in The La’s.

Due to the huge catalogue of tracks Claire has written, aside from the obvious necessity to create riffs to construct songs around, many writers would be found wanting for lyrics in similar abundance. With a stockpile of diaries and a full bookshelf however, Claire has a repository of material to plunder for words as well.

Because of the origins of the lyrics, the majority of the words to her songs are personal. ‘I don’t write about characters, I write about myself or people that I know. I very rarely get stuck with lyrics’ Claire says. ‘I’ve been keeping a diary since I was ten. I’ve got diaries going back to 1992-93.’

In addition to the off-kilter pop melodies, a non-sung track always features on each release, ‘Georgian Quarter’ memorably comparing an ‘empty’ person with one of the cities vacant storied townhouses, points up Claire’s fondness for the form. ‘I like spoken-word pieces’ she nods. ‘I do at least one spoken word song on each album.’

Where the lyrics swerve away from the personal pan-pop cultural references abound, such as 2011’s unsettling ‘Enfield Poltergeist ’77’, detailing the infamous case of the ‘demonic possession’ of two young sisters who lived in the London suburb.

Turning the perspective away from those who witnessed the events, the lyric is written from the viewpoint of one of the two girls, relating her feelings as the national press turned up to report on the phenomenon. Nincompoop meanwhile references the passing of North Korean despot Kim Jong-Il in the prosaically titled piano-led track ‘Kim Is Dead’.

Despite Claire’s presence in several Liverpool bands including a lengthy stint behind the drumkit for Seawitches, she has resolutely remained solo where her own songs are concerned.

This preference for flying solo aside from occasional guest appearances by friends has remained Claire’s approach since her first forays into music. ‘I’ve only really had one band of my own about three or four years ago and it really wasn’t what I wanted to do’ the singer explains. It became a watered down version of what I was doing on the 4-track and it wasn’t getting my sound across at all. It just sounded like any other guitar band and it really wasn’t what I was going for.’

The splendidly titled 2011 LP Repressed Childhood Memorex a nod to the interregnum format between vinyl and CDs, flagged up a notable detail of Claire’s output, as all of her music has been recorded on cassettes.

Prior to the MacBook’s dominance and the ability to capture rough ideas on iPhones, the humble 4-track was the decades-long mainstay of the grassroots musician. With vinyl’s continuing renaissance however, the cassette has also undergone an unexpected rebirth, with some bands revisiting the near-obsolete format.

‘I got a 4-track when I was 14, that’s what I still use. Everything I’ve done has been on cassette’ Claire explains. ‘I use a program called Audacity so I just lift it from the cassette source straight onto a computer.’

On the subject of technology, prior to the arrival of Soundcloud, iTunes et al, options for musicians starting out in the distant days of the early 2000s as cassettes fell out of favour were effectively limited to CD-Rs. Due to the inexpensiveness of the format Claire took to a novel approach to getting her music heard.

‘I used to give CDs to Probe Records in bulk and say ‘Give them away’’ the singer recalls of her initial forays into music. ‘I used to give them 50 CDs at a time every year and say ‘Give them out for free.’

‘I didn’t get online until 2008 and MySpace was in a bit of a decline at that point. I avoided it for years’ Claire continues. ‘I’m not deliberately sticking with the cassettes, that’s what I learnt when I was 14 and 15. If I was 14 and 15 in 2008 I would’ve got into the whole computer thing. Besides, I’m looking on eBay now for a MiniDisc 8-track, that’s a huge step up’ she grins.

Aside from her Bandcamp page Claire additionally uploads tracks that are still works-in-progress, a sensitive area for some songwriters, who prefer their initial song ideas not be aired publically.

‘My Soundcloud I use as a pick n’ mix kinda thing’ she explains. ‘There’s some more polished stuff on there, finished demos and then there’s stuff I’ve recorded directly onto my phone, songs that aren’t even finished. Most people would hold back until it’s finished and all nice and polished. But I just like sharing it. As soon as I come up with something I wanna share it with everyone.’

Despite the warmth of the analogue recordings and Claire’s self-sufficiency on almost all of the instruments, the singer doesn’t care for the now overused tag of ‘lo-fi.’ ‘I don’t think its lo-fi, its lo-tech’ Claire says. ‘Lo-fi is when people deliberately try and sound a bit grainy or muffled. I don’t try to sound shit. I try to sound as good as I can with the technology I’ve got. If I had the money I’d spend it on a 16-track and do it myself’ she continues. ‘In 15 years I’ve only been into a recording studio once.’

The alternative sobriquet of ‘bedroom musician’ is also inaccurate too it seems. ‘I’ve moved from the bedroom to the living room, I’m a lounge musician!’ Claire laughs.

The aforementioned American DIY icon R. Stevie Moore, an artist who defines the ‘outsider music’ aesthetic like almost no other, has been one of Claire’s biggest sources of inspiration in recent years. ‘His albums are like radio shows, every song’s completely different, my albums have become more eclectic since I’ve seen how he’s done it’ Claire enthuses.

Following her online championing of the Nashville native who played an acclaimed show at The Kazimier last June, the two began corresponding. ‘I was posting his songs on Facebook, like a dozen in a week, ‘Check this guy out, he’s amazing’ Claire recalls. ‘R. Stevie Moore must had searched for himself on Facebook and saw ‘Claire Welles Liverpool’ posting all these videos, so he added me and we became friends and started collaborating, sending each other mp3s.’

2010 LP Wife Machine, possibly Claire’s poppiest album yet featured the two duetting on Chuck Berry standard ‘Havana Moon’, a version that also found its way onto Moore’s three volume set Replica Vol. I. Alongside this, one of Claire’s most intriguing missives, ‘Hobbies Galore’ features input from Moore. ‘That’s his lyrics’ she explains. ‘It’s a song of his from 1987 and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, I took them and mixed the two together.’

The exponential work rate established over the past decade and a half shows no sign of abating, a habit Claire jokingly suggests is ‘’Cos I don’t go out partying’ she offers. ‘I should do some more’.

Next in the pipeline possibly is a ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation, marking fifteen years since Claire started making music. ‘I’m 30 in April for my 30th I’m gonna do a ‘Best Of’/‘Greatest Hits’ kinda thing. Thirty at Thirty I think’ Claire laughs. ‘It’s gonna be from ’98 to 2013. It’s gonna be two tapes and I’m really gonna push that one, the Greatest Hits tour!’

As for what follows after that, Claire’s response is plaintive but entirely fitting. ‘I’m gonna carry on making music until I’m dead. I’ve got another 50-odd years’ she smiles.

clairewelles.bandcamp.com
soundcloud.com/clairewelles

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