Amid the turbulence in today’s music industry, CLARA LOFARO is an old soul in a young body with an independent spirit. The Toronto transplant inherently believes her music must always possess the timeless qualities of the old and the new to have a sustainable future.
After all, she’s building a lasting career which is just impacting America with the release of Perfekt World, her third album on ComeTrue Records, the label she started as a student at the Berklee College of Music. Now based in New York, the Toronto Indie Week winner breaks through musical barriers; fueled by the gift to create music that makes us FEEL something. Because when it comes down to it, Lofaro knows that’s the primary reason people have always listened to music. “I want to make music that’s great because it gives people an experience,†she says. “I’m not following a formula other than always trying to give a song something different to make it my own, unlike anything else I’ve ever heard.â€Produced by Mark Turrigiano (Ingrid Michaelson's, Boys and Girls), Perfekt World continues the tradition of the new-age female singer-songwriter carved out by such mainstream mainstays as KT Tunstall and Amy Winehouse. Clearly inspired by Annie Lennox, John Legend and Laura Nyro, Lofaro is an eclectic songwriter and soulful performer whose music embraces pop, rock, R&B, jazz, and any number of stops in between. It starts with a radio-free childhood restricted to oldies and traditional recordings until she reached her teens, due to a conservative Italian upbringing.Lofaro and Turrigiano chose animal instinct and having fun over the fundamental ways to use instruments on Perfekt World to create a new energy hell-bent upon taking risks with a universal approach. Lofaro wanted “No Way Home,†with its street-smart ethnicity, to sound like a bunch of old Balkan men drunk in a bar banging beer bottles playing traditional music together, because in college she loved hanging out with people from all over the world steeped in those same sensibilities. On “Bitch Go Off,†Lofaro used an assembled drum kit made of trashcans and other discards Turrigiano picked up on Bowery in Chinatown to help convey the liberating experience of speaking one’s actual inner thoughts.
“Waterfall,†the first single, is a pop-rock ballad with indie-rock appeal, yet it introduces classic psychedelia halfway through the first verse. It’s about taking a chance to love again despite being hurt enough times to no longer believe it can exist. With its lilting harmonies, “Birds of a Feather†is a ballad that opens the album by showing how we all live in our own worlds, and gain confidence from keeping the good things close and knowing we’re not alone, no matter how different our perspectives or how long the road. The mid-tempo title track uses doo-wop backup vocals beneath a pop chorus for an Otis Redding groove, giving an old school vibe to modern pop.
She has recently partnered with Action Against Hunger (ACF), a non-profit, non-discriminating, international organization, donating 20% of proceeds from Perfekt World album sales, and collaborating on a video that will use Perfekt World to complete her vision of reaching and helping people with her music.
“If we could find beauty in each other’s differences instead of thinking our way was better, life would be a heck of a lot easier,†she says. “It’s raw, emotional music with no barriers. Freedom-pop is what I’d call it. If we could embrace this life before it passes us by – I’m still trying to get there.â€