Balance of Nature: An Interview with Claire Welles

A Claire Welles album is never far away. With a body of work that could rival the likes of Robert Pollard or Matt Christensen, the Liverpool straight-shooter and outlier provocateur seemingly finds making music as common as walking to the shop to fetch a pint of milk. Creativity, merely forming a part of the daily patchwork. The ideas, endless.

Even the COVID pandemic didn’t slow her down; in fact, the period saw the songwriter release some of her finest work, spearheaded by Dazed (2021), with the momentum continuing via the one-two combination of Othello and Package Holiday (both 2022).

There’s no let-up on Welles’ on her latest dispatch, Balance of Nature. A no-holds-barred, genre-straddling odyssey where the songwriter’s sharp wit and observations are, indeed, as good as ever.

From the wonky fever dream of Living in Vain, Glad to Be Alive and Beauty Remains, to the rolling synths that dominate Widnes and the title track, Welles’ unveils a skewed, pop-infused sensibility. This is sonics through the blender, and the results are gooey, distorted psych-pop that sees Welles putting a new marker down in her forever changing sound world.

While Some Positivity evokes the immediacy of a karaoke banger in your local boozer on a Thursday night, the biggest shift on Balance of Nature comes with Prisoner of Hatred – a countrified barnyard stomp; aesthetically, it’s the kind of song that could serve her well in future releases. Or maybe it won’t? That’s the beauty of the Claire Welles experience. You never know where she’ll take us next.

In the lead-up to Friday’s release, earlier in the month, Welles answered some questions about Balance of Nature, and what she’s been up to since our last chat.  

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S13: When we spoke earlier in the year, you seemed really excited about this release, and with a song like Beauty Remains, I can see why – you’re really in the groove! Was the most important thing you wanted to achieve with Balance of Nature?

Claire Welles: “I wanted to have one last go at making a big sounding pop album that people could connect with emotionally. It was also really important to paint an honest picture of my current life and not pretend that everything is all rosy. We live in an age now where we expect people to be perfect all the time and it’s scary. Beauty Remains was actually a leftover from the Othello album in 2021, but the version here has been totally reworked and re-pitched, with different lyrics too. I found a really good 24bit AI mastering program to master all the tracks as I felt my last album was a little flat and could’ve sounded better.”

S13: Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the title?

CW: “The cover art and title came from a children’s encyclopedia called Questions & Answers that I had as a kid in the 1980s; I found the image quite disturbing, and it stuck with me. It shows a painting called Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Willem van der Meer by Michael Janz van Mierevelt, from the 1600s. The chapter it came from was called The Balance Of Nature and it fit the album perfectly as it’s such a manic and bipolar album. The balance between good and bad, fake and real, life and death.”

S13: You self-produced and mixed this one, too. With so many releases under your belt, once you’ve finished an album, do you spend time with it, or is it onto the next one?

CW: “This album was finished in July of last year, but I chose to keep hold of it for a while as I felt that I’d over saturated myself with the volume of albums I was releasing. I just wanted a year where I didn’t release anything and try pacing myself for once, mainly so I didn’t burn out but also, so people don’t get sick of me.

“When an album’s finished it’s finished and I tend to move onto the next project soon after, which is the luxury of being a solo artist. One of the main reasons I’m against ever being in a band is I don’t have the mental fortitude to play the same songs again and again and again, that’s death to me. Bands are just a dilution of the original ideas anyway and I’m poor at communicating what I want to other people.”

S13: Can you tell us about your creative process. For instance, do you work on music every day?

CW: “I work on music and lyrics every few days and record music in short but intense bursts. I remember starting the recording of the track 1983 at midday and finished mixing it and mastering it by 8pm, eight hours. That’s quite a long time for me to work on a particular song, normally they take about three or four hours. I always start with a drum track, then build it up from there. When I’m in the zone I come up with stuff really quick and it’s like a drug. It’s very rare for me to leave a song unfinished; once I begin work on something I expect to complete it before beginning work on another track.

“I think I’ve used a recording studio maybe twice in all these years of doing music and that was only for doing a vocal take. I prefer doing everything myself when I feel a genuine urge to, rather than pretending to be inspired because it’s costing me 50 pounds an hour.”

S13: Living in Vain seems like a track truly born from these strange times. How important was this song to choose as the opener?

CW: “It was the first track I recorded for the album and so is a transitional piece leading on from my last album Package Holiday; it was recorded before I had any idea of what type of album this would be. It’s a totally bipolar song for what turned out to be a bipolar album. This track starts off with thunder and lightning and ends with the sound of the skies clearing and the sun coming out, with the classical piece I lifted from a tape near the end.

“Lyrically it came from a place of deep hurt as I was coming off alcohol during the early stages of this album and my head was all over the place. It goes back to what I said earlier about how everyone feels the need to always be ‘nice’ and put a fake version of themselves forward to the world, this song is me going against all that.”

S13: Your songs have always lent themselves to locality and Widnes feels like another of those moments. Do you see your immediate surroundings as a key influence on your music?

CW: “Totally, although I’m mostly a shut in and prefer to be around the house with my hobbies. I went to high school in Widnes in the 1990s, hence the line about wiping the spit off my back, I was abused almost every day, which left massive scarring on my mind. I suppose the track is about forgiveness and holding my head up high now that I’m older and don’t have to deal with being humiliated on a daily basis. I quite like Widnes now; they have some of the best chippies in the north too and if I was ever to get into the rugby, I’d follow the Widnes Vikings for sure. They also have a good-sized ASDA, what more could you want?”

S13: And what about politics? Do you consider that an influence?

CW: “Yes and no, I write about my politics and politics around me. But that’s totally different from party politics – something I’ve no interest in at all. Party politics is best left to people who read more than I do and can memorise the right words in the right order. I have no opinion on any of that lot, all politicians are fucking weirdos by nature. They all give me the creeps. What’s going on in Gaza is beyond horrific but what can I do personally? Nothing. It’s just a fast track to making yourself more insane. We don’t even have the option of voting against support for genocide, austerity, and all that shite at the next election; just who administers it. The next general election will be more like a cabinet reshuffle than a real change of direction so: why engage with it at all?”

S13: Glad To Be Alive and Some Positivity are some one of the most optimistic songs of yours I think I’ve heard. Do you feel like you’re in a better head space now than you have been in previous years?

CW: “Oh god no! Glad To Be Alive is totally a sarcastic song and is only called that because it would’ve been in poor taste to call it I Wish I Was Dead or something like that. I have pretty severe bipolar disorder, so every day is an adventure and a surprise as to what head space I’ll be in. Right now, I feel quite happy, but the next I’m up the wall with boredom and have bad thoughts. It’s a handy little superpower to have as a musician or artist though because it’s an endless source of inspiration and I feel things deeper than most people I suppose which comes out in the music and lyrics. It’s cathartic and I genuinely believe that by acknowledging the bad in life, good will come out of it, whether it’s good art or just feeling better for expressing something within yourself.”

S13: Almost Instantly and Living in Vain seem loosely linked. I might have asked you this in the past, but what’s your relationship with social media these days?

CW: “Almost Instantly was the last song to be written and recorded. It was started on a ferry to the Isle of Man to pass the time but the social media lyric came to me under the influence of edibles which I got into last year, about how we’ve drifted into fascism, about social media being a bad dream. I think it’s true, we have become a mostly heartless, cruel and dog eat dog society on social media. I chose to come off Twitter quite some time ago when it was taken over by that space nonce fella. It’s a fascist platform that shouldn’t exist, populated by people who are simply addicted to it. Most of the people on there are just sad, lonely fuckers. Social media was a mildly interesting concept, 20 years ago perhaps. I’d ban it tomorrow if I had my way, especially Twitter or whatever it calls itself nowadays.”

S13: Musically, Prisoner of Hatred is a nice shift in sound, which got me thinking. What were you listening to when were working on this record?

CW: “I wanted to make something like Ween’s pseudo-country album or early Meat Puppets, the train pulling in at the start of Prisoner of Hatred kills me, it’s hilarious and ridiculous. Then it changes from a country song to a synth track at the end. I wanted the ending of that to be as anthemic as Hey Jude or something like that, something that goes on and on forever. It’s now in my live set as a closing song. When I made the album in 2023, I would’ve been listening to stuff like Yes, Wire, early Public Image, Magazine, The Raincoats, Erasure. My favourite album last year though was We by a.P.A.t.T, who are just getting better and better in my opinion.”

CW: You’ve played shows with some influential figures over recent years such as Tim Burgess and Jane Weaver. What would be your dream collaboration?

CW: “I’d mostly just like to get back out again and do some gigs to different people. The Tim Burgess and Jane Weaver tours were a great experience and I’m very thankful for them, but I was in a bad place with alcoholism at the time and weighed about 17 stone; I wasn’t exactly ‘match fit’ and numbed those experiences by drinking too much and not looking after myself. I’ve since got my weight back down again now and look a lot better, I’m writing better songs now, I’m better at producing and mixing now, it all comes from having a clear head.

“There are a few underground names I’d like to gig with actually, such as The Tumbledryer Babies, Alice Low and Woman’s Touch. They’re from all over the UK, I wish Liverpool had more DIY artists and events like Manchester has for example. There are some going now with places like QUARRY and Kazimier Stockroom, and people such as It Is Happening Again, a night started by the members of Ladies In The Radiator. We need more genuine weirdos and outsiders making music, Liverpool is very much a guitar bands orientated city with an emphasis on being ‘rootsy’, which is vile to me, and I’ve never fitted in with any of that ever. I’d rather be dead than sound like The La’s.”

S13: What’s next for Claire Welles?

CW: “Two new projects, one completed and one ongoing. I’ve already finished recording the follow-up album for Balance of Nature, mixed, mastered, the lot, but as I said earlier I’m trying to pace myself more now so it likely won’t be released until early 2025. The next album is only seven tracks long, but they all clock in over six minutes each and are very much weed influenced, with much more space in the instruments and vocals. One album a year is enough, especially as I’ve been recording music for nearly 30 years. I’m two albums ahead of schedule though and also currently working on a Commodore Amiga album for 2026, using the OctaMED program rather than Ableton. It’s super fun to use and breaks the monotony of working with Ableton for now as it’s totally stale to me. It’s been good to learn something totally new and the Amiga is a really creative tool to use and has tons of personality. It’s good to work outside of your comfort zone every now and then. Maybe I’ll pack in music and become a traffic warden.”

Balance of Nature is out Friday. Purchase from Bandcamp.