Growing up in Dublin, she got in touch with the local music scene through her father, who played guitar in various bands. Being raised with folk, blues and the heritage of old traditionals, she soon picked up the guitar for herself and began to fiddle around with first chords and melodies. It didn‘t take long until she wrote songs of her own: „It gave me the chance to express myself, like an honest way of communication with the world“, Claire-Ann says today.
At the age of twenty-six, after several gigs of her own in and around Dublin, playing mainly acoustic folk music, Claire-Ann felt that it was time for her to make a change.
Intrigued by the idea of getting in touch with electronic sounds in music and incorporating these new and exciting soundscapes into her own songs, she decided to move to Berlin:
„There were all these young and interesting artists coming up, who added something to their music, that I hadn‘t heard before. And I wanted to explore that in my own music, too.“, she says.
In Berlin it didn‘t take long until she met Matze Heising and Joschka Bender, two musicians from Germany. Together they began to write songs, and very soon it became clear, that there was a mutual understanding of what each of them wanted in their music, and that the musical vision of Claire-Ann was more than similar to Matze‘s and Joschka‘s.
In the summer of 2017 the trio then started to play shows in the bars and on the rooftops of Berlin to get a feel for the new songs and sounds. Soon they decided that it was the right time to make first recordings. Moving all their instruments and mobile-studio equipment to a shed in the countryside, they spent two weeks on arranging, recording and finalizing their debut-EP „Roamer“.
The five songs it features explore the themes of „trying to navigate your way through adulthood and how some of these transitions aren‘t always easy“, Claire-Ann says about the lyrics. She writes about her reality in a world that can make you feel like it‘s turning faster than ever, and how that can become overwhelming sometimes.
Claire-Ann’s vocals are embedded by warm acoustic guitars, mellow synths, earthy drums and ethereal pedal steel guitar sounds.
On „Roamer“ the band manages to make music that is deeply rooted in a classical singer-songwriter and folk background but at the same time never sounds dated. There is always that certain dash of nonconformity with the rules of these genres; a darker take on the whole thing, at times more quirky and eerie than you‘d expect, then again taking a turn into the more straight realms of music.