Northern Radar presents
Billie Marten
Clara Mann
Sunday 3rd December, 7.30pm
Tickets are £17.50 (+b/f) in advance (more on the door) and available from See Tickets.

*This is a standing show*

*This show is now sold out*

Billie got her early start in music thanks to parents who surrounded her with the music of Nick Drake, John Martyn, Joni Mitchell, Joan Armatrading, Kate Bush, Loudon Wainwright III and northern folk artist Chris Wood. The family lived in the cathedral city Ripon, North Yorkshire, where Billie grew up in and around the Dales.

Billie was then signed to Chess Club Records, an imprint of Sony. Not long afterwards, she was nominated for the BBC Sound of 2016. Her critically acclaimed debut album, Writing of Blues and Yellows, was a diarist, open-hearted collection of quietly beautiful songs released in 2016, when she was still just 17. The following year, she moved to London, where she worked on her 2019 follow-up, Feeding Seahorses By Hand, which The Line of Best Fit declared a “gentle and reserved masterpiece”.

Towards the end of 2019, Billie underwent a total overhaul, leaving Sony and choosing a new management team. She signed to Fiction records, a division of Universal, in lockdown via zoom. She then went back into the studio and reunited with producer Rich Cooper. Billie felt empowered to experiment and rediscover herself.

Since then, she has toured frequently throughout the UK and US, returning home to record her fourth record Drop Cherries. Her writing themes explore social commentary, the struggle with modernity vs tradition, nature, mental health, relationships, and a general voyeurism on the world as she sees it.

Clara Mann

Clara Mann makes almost-folk to keep calm in a busy world. The 19-year old newcomer made her striking debut in February this year with ‘Consolations’ (Sad Club Records) – an EP tipped on release for its wise-beyond-years approach, intimate production and distinctive, self-assured vocals. Preceded with tender first single ‘I Didn’t Know You Were Leaving Today’ and clear-cut follow-up track ‘Thoughtless’, the four-song collection observes her first meetings with adulthood; befriending vulnerability, protecting malleable boundaries, and the fragility of self that runs parallel with personal growth.

A keen painter, visual storytelling is embedded into Clara’s music, and during its incubation she found herself drawn further into the work of Edward Hopper; “maybe today I was the hunched figure from ‘Nighthawks’, tomorrow, the woman in the empty bedroom of ‘Morning Sun’. The pictures bled into the songs – the movie-still feeling, the muted colours.” In keeping with this romanticised nostalgia, Clara’s eyes serendipitously fell upon scores of Liszt’s ‘Consolations’ last summer, a piano series her mother used to play when she was young. Reminded of its comfort ringing throughout her childhood home in the south of France, it felt apt to mirror this and name the release by the notion with which Clara’s own writing provided her – to console.

Northern Radar presents
Billie Marten
Clara Mann
Sunday 3rd December, 7.30pm
Tickets are £17.50 (+b/f) in advance (more on the door) and available from See Tickets.