Jan 2011

It's all about the voice. A big, blues belter of a voice, a voice that's lived a little, that knows things, that hints huskily of hidden mysteries. It was the voice that drew people in, when they heard its siren call over MySpace, and producers who got in touch asking for guest vocals were always surprised to find that it belonged to a slip of a girl from a large Irish family in Birmingham.

She wrote her first song at the age of seven, and never remembers wanting to do anything else. For her, music wasn't a career choice, or a fast route to fame. It was a calling. By the age of 13, she was a regular in city centre record shops, where she discovered Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Howling Wolf, plus her heroine, the feisty gospel star Sister Rosetta Tharpe. By seventeen, Clare had dropped out of school and by day was working in shops, bars and restaurants to save enough money to make the move to London. By night, she sat up making connections on MySpace, eventually pulling in an extraordinary 1.5 million hits to hear the rough demos she had posted on her page.

After fierce competition from other labels, she signed to Polydor at the age of 20. What followed were two years of travelling, writing, recording and searching for a sound that felt right for her. In LA, she met Rick Rubin, who played her unreleased Johnny Cash demos and invited her to come with him to watch Leonard Cohen in rehearsal. In New York, Jay Z invited her for drinks in his restaurant and told her she had star quality: he could see it in her eyes.

When she eventually found the right collaborator in Fraser T Smith (whose credits includes Britney, Cee-Lo, Tinchy Stryder, Ellie Goulding and James Morrisson), the songs on Light After Dark came quickly. Most took just a day to write; in some, the vocals were recorded in the first take, capturing them while they were still raw and real.

Songs on 'Light After Dark' are inspired by everything from the death of Michael Jackson ('The Last Dance') to the magic of childhood ('The Happiest Pretenders') or the loneliness of her first few months in the capital (the uplifting, gospel-inflected 'Break These Chains'), these are torch songs for the 21st century, both completely contemporary and utterly timeless.

You'll hear mournful echoes of the Irish folk music Clare grew up with on this album, hints of all the artists that influenced her: the Celtic vibes of Sinead O'Connor, the powerful vocals of Annie Lennox, the quirky innovations of Kate Bush, the soul of Johnny Cash. But mostly, you'll hear an iconic new singer with a sound that's all her own. As she's always said, it's all about the voice.

"Mixing together poetic fragility, epic production and of course, Maguire's thundering voice, Light After Dark evokes the raw pop power of classic Eurythmics and Kate Bush" – Dazed & Confused

"A mainstream – leaning, electro-flecked amalgam of Eurythmics, Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac and Florence" - NME