Parenthesis, I

Now with a number of bold solo albums under her belt and a successful record label, it’s hard to remember a time when UK songwriter and songbird Josienne Clarke was anything other than a leading lady. But she used to feel swallowed up by the music industry, constrained by her label, by the duo that had overwhelmed her artistry, by the ‘folk’ genre itself. Breaking free of these chains may have been difficult, but it gifted us a singular artist with no limitations on her art. With her new album, Parenthesis, I, Clarke’s songwriting feels effortless. She exudes confidence, content to trust her own songwriting power and to let her glorious voice shine a beacon forward. Each track on the new album has a different flavour. ‘Spherical’ has a rhythmic carnival bounce to it, as Clarke sings of endings that become beginnings again, while ‘Dead Woman’s Bones’ brings shimmering flute and echoey piano together with haunting lyrics. Here, Clarke riffs on her first roots in British folk, but throughout she blazes a new path for herself, moving from the uncertainty and change of earlier years to a new era of self-assured confidence. ‘I let the heartless make a host of me / And they plundered me for melody’ she sings in ‘Most of All’, but those days are gone now.