A musical celebration of the messy, complex, beautiful and sometimes brutal transition to motherhood. Bring your mum, and your mates, your mother’s group or the humans who are in the parenting trenches with you.
Claire Tonti is a Naarm-based singer/songwriter and host of both the award-winning podcast Suggestible and her interview show TONTS, where she speaks to writers, activists, experts, thinkers and deeply feeling humans about their stories. After putting her musical career on hold to start her family – a common occurrence for women within creative fields, Claire’s debut album ‘Matrescence’ funnels her experience during this time into 11 beautifully restrained indie folk songs, the album covers love, loss and trauma and the imperfect joys and difficulties that sit inside us as we grow into ourselves and into our power as women.
As the title suggests, Claire’s writing explores how the transition through motherhood / matrescence changes and alters us. Inspired by her own experiences and the stories of women in her life, lyrics are at the forefront of the album. Pared back production by collaborator and producer Ezekiel Fenn allows the concise melodies and Claire’s warm, emotive vocals to take centre stage. Acoustic instrumentation makes up the body of the work, as well as a cameo from Claire’s daughter on her latest single Free, which speaks to breaking away from female societal expectations. The downtempo Self is stripped back with just guitar, drums and bass, and discusses overcoming birth trauma and post natal depression. The roomy Lullaby feels like you’re sitting next to Claire by the piano featuring recordings from her original voice memos, whilst the uptempo and breezy All Kinds of Lovely sees her sing a duet with her own manipulated voice, reminiscent of Feist, Holly Throsby and Lucy Rose.
Of the album Claire says, “The songs for this album poured out of me when I finally gave myself permission to be still and figure out what I wanted to do and who I was beyond fulfilling all the roles women are expected to be: mother/wife/daughter/friend/sister/colleague. The title of this album Matrescence is defined as our transition to motherhood. When a baby is born so is a mother. Equivalent both physically and psychologically to adolescence with all its awkward hormones, gigantic identity shifts and general life upheaval. There is so much that we’re only beginning to understand about what actually happens to women when they become mothers – both incredibly wonderful and undeniably difficult, complex and sometimes traumatic. There was a lot that happened to me. This album is my way of trying to understand all of it.”
Claire’s music was recently the soundtrack for the M/other festival through the Wheeler Centre.
