Frog Stand Records

Songbirds and bees

Brooklyn’s Clare and the Reasons make
charmed chamber pop

Clare Muldaur’s honey-sweet vocals and fanciful chamber pop soundscapes may belie the sophistication of her compositions and her husband Olivier Manchon’s arrangements of brass, strings and woodwinds, but it’s that levity and wonder that make Clare and the Reasons so charming.

Based in Brooklyn, Muldaur hails from Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where her mother is a schoolteacher. Her sister Jenni is a singer, who recently toured the world singing back-up for David Byrne, and her father Geoff Muldaur is a musician who plays what his daughter deems an unclassifiable blend of styles from the first half of the 20th century—she recommends his early ’70s albums on Warner, which are “way ahead of their time,” she says, and recorded during a period “when Warner Bros. used to support artistic things” (Clare and the Reasons are signed to Frog Stand Records, incidentally). During his long career, Geoff Muldaur crossed paths with legendary songwriter Van Dyke Parks, a mentor of sorts to Clare and Manchon…

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