SpudShow 259 - Clair

music supplied by IodaPromonet

Group - Clair

Track 1 - Every Day
Track 2 - Christine
Track 3 - Billy and the Dial Tone

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Clair
"Every Day (I Walk Over, I Walk on)" (mp3)
from "Long Road Home"
(The Cougar Label)

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More On This Album

Clair
"Christine" (mp3)
from "Long Road Home"
(The Cougar Label)

Clair
"Billy and the Dial Tone" (mp3)
from "Long Road Home"
(The Cougar Label)

Info

The album begins with slow-burning pop and bright shining vocals, which lead you through a tour of romantic longing and crumbling industrial landscapes. This is Lindsay Sullivan's New York. Through her music and lyrics, the band Clair narrows a spotlight on individual moments, singular voices living their lives amidst everyday frustrations and classical arcs. Their debut, Long Road Home, veers from clamorous rock to pensive, piano-driven sketches, traversing a wide stretch of musical and emotional ground.

Sullivan, Clair's vocalist and songwriter, has lived in New York for most of her life. "I've played piano, sung, and written various things (plays, short stories, etc.) since I was a kid but never officially started songwriting until my first band, Mason Dixon," Sullivan says. In 2005, Sullivan left the Americana-fueled Mason Dixon to assemble her own band. She soon encountered her old friend and guitarist Brendan Boehning, who quickly became a mainstay of the group, co-writing the music for Long Road Home's "Every Day" and "Gun to My Head." "We've been really lucky getting great musicians to play with us," says Sullivan. "Right now we are working with Lizzie Carena who is a talented vocalist, Dan Loomis, a very respected jazz bassist and my cousin Kevin Duda on drums, who is a great player and a fantastic addition to the band."

Sullivan's writing process varies from song to song. "I usually start with an idea, which could be a lyric, melody, character, setting, emotion, news story…whichever one I start with I then work to build the other elements around. Occasionally the stars align and it all happens at once ("Goodness James") and sometimes I have to labor over the song for six months ("Every Day")." The result is an album that shimmers at times and aches with longing at others and is bolstered by a classically buoyant pop sensibility, a trace of lap steel and an open-sky voice.

2008 Internation Year of the Potato