Clare’s riding a carousel to success

8:22am Friday 1st June 2007

When Michael Parkinson conferred his favour on Clare Teal's new album, Paradisi Carousel, and Terry Wogan played tracks from it on his BBC Radio 2 show, she must have been relieved as well as gratified.

For these days being a recording artist carries a great deal of uncertainty about the future. In the past this uncertainty concerned whether the public would take to a particular song, a particular album. Now, albums are becoming irrelevant.

"Sales of CDs are 30 per cent down," the 34-year-old Skipton songstress told the T&A. "Rather than learning an album and loving it the way their parents did, kids are getting a buzz out of picking and choosing their own compilations thanks to itunes.

"Record companies have seen this coming for years; but it seems to have crept up on them. It's exciting for people setting up independent labels."

Has she thought of striking out as an independent producer?

"Oh yes, I have thought of that. I wouldn't be scared of doing it: it could be quite liberating."

If Clare Teal does go down that road it won't be just yet. Female singers tend to reach their prime at the age of 35, she said, and she's looking forward to a long-lasting prime as a singer-songwriter. Besides, she has a contract with Sony to fulfil and is still enjoying belonging to a major record label.

"It's wonderful because you get lost of opportunities to do things you couldn't do before; but if these days are coming to an end it will be fascinating to see what record companies will be doing; in a couple of years it's all going to change," she added.

The end of the album as an entity is not something she likes to contemplate. She accepts that youngsters may prefer separate songs rather than a dozen or more cuts in one go; cherishing an album for the way that songs have been chosen and put together is, she fears, a habit of the past.

In which case record companies may decide that allowing an artist a year to come up with a dozen tracks or, as in the case of Clare's Paradisi Carousel, 11 tracks, is a luxury they can no longer afford. In December Sony told her to take six months off.

"I dutifully did, but I missed it. Usually I am out three or four times a week. I am not doing any northern dates until the autumn. The furthest north I get in the summer is Skegness at the end of June."

However, early birds can tune in to Radio 2 at 7.30am on June 22, when Clare takes over Sarah Kennedy's show for the day. She's been sorting through her CD collection just in case she is allowed to choose all the tracks.

Of the 11 compositions on her new album five are her own, four are covers and two were written by others. Of the cover versions the one that seems to have taken off with live audiences is Light Flight, an old Pentangle song that was the title track for a television series called Take Three Girls, back in the mists of time.

"I was worried how a live audience would cope because it's not musically easy on the ear, going from 6/4, 5/4 to 2/4; but they love it because you can see the band in full flight," she said.

Her own songs were, she says, written fairly quickly. With the others she took a great deal of time, especially on providing layers of backing vocals.

"I was very interested in creating walls of sound with vocals. I admire people like Richard Carpenter. It's called easy listening but to get a sound like that takes a long time, so I wanted to have a go."

She was afraid of getting into a rut, singing her way through the great American songbook in pale imitation of Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra. To them it was pop music.

"Orchestras were set up daily for that. You no longer have Nelson Riddle and Billy May scoring amazing music. What could I bring to it? So the album is this melting pot of sounds. All sorts of things are being fused now.

"You just don't want to do something for the sake of it. I have always been a jazzy singer rather than a puristy jazz singer. Mainstream is populist, popular song," she said. And that's what she does - to great acclaim.

Paradisi Carousel is available on Sony BMG now.

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