| "The jazz-inflected arrangements are beautiful: with their water-colour wash of violins, bird-like flutes and swooning celeste they have the heady fragrance of an expensive perfume." -The Guardian "Clare Muldaur Manchon is seemingly destined for stardom." -Q magazine The Movie is a sassy blast of symphonic jazz-noir that twins the demob-happy air of voguish revivalists like the Puppini Sisters with the future-folk adventurism of your Joanna Newsoms. Like Sufjan, Clare Muldaur Manchon isn't afraid to wear her erudition on her sleeve.-- FOUR STARS -Observer Music Monthly "Making big bad brutal New York City feel like a place of gentle, bittersweet romance is quite an achievement. It's one normally only possible on screen - the film adaptation of Barefoot in the Park for example. The debut album by Clare and the Reasons, knowingly titled The Movie, captures a similar mood, with its palette of light folk, light jazz and light orchestral pop. Clare Muldaur Manchon and her Brooklyn-based band make a sound which is as episodic as Beach Boys circa Smile (the presence of Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks is no coincidence) and which has the dreaminess of early Disney."-FOUR STARS -The Independent TIME OUT CHICAGO LIVE SXSW REVIEW Her delivery is reminiscent of a 50s pop vocalist, suggesting an innocence that belies both her self-assured performance and playful lyrics ("I’d like to cook for you in my underwear/’cause our kitchen points to a wall"). Clare and the Reasons definitely had me filled with the old-time religion. -TIME OUT CHICAGO TOP LIVE SHOW -Time Out New York As with much of the band's work, the tone of "Pluto" is buoyed by its string section as much as by its frontwoman. Both on record and in concert, Clare & the Reasons hinge on breezy, old-fashioned orchestrations. The group's trump card is approaching such pop with an unusually professional edge while rarely lapsing into stiff slickness.
—Jay Ruttenberg -Time Out New York Poor pitiful Pluto. So cold, so dark, so distant. And now that it's no longer a planet, Clare Muldaur Manchon feels very sad. Breaking the bad news in "Pluto" and "Pluton," the two cuts that bookend The Movie, Manchon's soprano quavers like a falling souffle, a trio of sccharine strings playing pizzicato in the background. It's a beautifully lush, '40s-era opening, her voice resonant with romance. The Berklee-educated daughter of Geoff Muldaur (guitarist of the gleefully retro Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band), Manchon sings as if she's been time=traveling like this all her life, as if it were perfectly natural to swing this effortlessly from jazz to fold to noir and back again. The smartly contemporary songs overflow with style, whether she's writing about bohemian break-ups ("Alphabet City"), waxing philosophical ("Love Can Be A Crime") or dreaming of wedded bliss ("Cook For You"). The Movie is a slyly earnest, bubbly concoction, its melodies buoyant and its lyrics sharp. With help from Gregoire Maret, Van Dyke Parks and Sufjan Stevens, the seven-piece Brooklyn band packs all the high drama of a full orchestra: sharp, urbane and deliciously unstuck in time. [Frog Stand, www.frogstandrecords.com] -Kenny Berkowitz MAGNET MAGAZINE: ISSUE 77 Sufjan Stevens and Van Dyke Parks play on Clare Muldaur Manchon's debut, an old-school set of dance-me-to-the-end-of-love strings and love-tipsy chanson. Subjects on these retro-jazz ballads range from Pluto to frogs, sans irony: sincerity prevails, with the wit, charm and swoon-craft you'd expect from the backing players' pedigrees.- -The Independent "The gloriously named Clare Muldaur Manchon has the voice of a disappointed angel, an attractive knack for the difficult art of deadpan melodrama, and a driving affinity for the classic torch ballad. With the assistance of a large and stellar cast, including Sufjan Stevens and Beach Boys collaborator Van Dyke Parks allongside her usual group The Reasons, she's assembled a bleakly delightful universe which combines, congruently enough, something of the vocal style of Rickie Lee Jones with the wearily witty lyrical sensibility of Tom Waits. Haunting, funny and altogether marvellous." -Andrew Mueller, UNCUT, CD Exclusive Clare and the Reasons’ songs—earnest, but playful, never taking themselves too seriously—are all about the little, poetic moments in life. And if you, too, long for the world of Casablanca and red wine, then may I suggest The Movie—the kind of record a young person could fall in love to. -PopMatters.com Bossa nova legend Astrud Gilberto. Easy listening nymphet Claudine Longet. Alison Statton of Young Marble Giants. Clare Grogan of Altered Images. Alison Shaw of Cranes. Nina Persson of the Cardigans. Alt-country singer Amy Allison. And now, add to this pantheon of the great baby-voiced female singers of pop music history Clare Muldaur Manchon. But the absolute masterpiece is the final track, "Pluton," a loving re-creation of space-age exotica complete with UFO-style pedal steel and theremin sounds trailing through shimmering pizzicato strings, married to Muldaur Manchon's wry lyrics about Pluto's recent demotion from planetary status. It's a perfect ending to one of the most assured and enjoyable debuts of 2007. -All Music Guide Fair Game on Public Radio International -------------------- -------------------- Atop an orchestra of plucked strings and backed by a complementary chorus of Reasons, Clare Muldaur's knee-buckling voice sings a bittersweet but ultimately uplifting song about the now-dwarf planet Pluto. "Cheer up, Pluto," she croons, "the stars still love you, and we down here do, too." Coupling this sort of charm with Muldaur's gorgeous voice, equally gorgeous orchestration, and a nice list of contributors. -Pitchfork Media |