Clare Free
Album: Butterflies
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.clarefree.co.uk

To paraphrase Clare Free from the press release that accompanied the album, "This is the album that saw Clare rediscover her mojo." Constant touring around Europe, before and after her last album and the associated worries about getting gigs and the sizes of audiences were beginning to bring her down.

In some ways the solution was obvious, head for home, escape the music industry treadmill and from there the love of music came flooding back. I don't think it's a coincidence that "Butterflies" was recorded at home with just Clare playing on it and it her most relaxed and expressive cut so far.

If it's not too much of a cliché Clare seems to have found a real freedom in her head and that filtered through to both her writing and playing and whilst I do miss the intensity that she found in some of her songs on previous cuts, it would have sounded out of place here, without a doubt.

Butterflies tend to conjure up two images for me, one is that almost directionless flittering when they are disturbed , the other that almost serene moment when they move from being at rest to leisurely expose their inner beauty for the world to see and this album feels very much like that, like a butterfly that feels safe enough to sit in the sun and open its wings.

Clare Free, has an album that feels more focused in songs than on instruments and arrangements and it appears to have had a positive and liberating effect. If you've bought her previous albums, this will feel a bit like a new direction, it is, but there is still plenty of the old Clare in the album. What it does up is a new singer-songwriter that has a potentially fresh audience opening up to her.

Neil King