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Miriam Clancy, pictured at Auckland venue Shanghai Lil’s

New Zealand singer-songwriter Miriam Clancy has a whirlwind of good publicity surrounding her; she’s even been compared to the likes of alt-country legends Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch.

But Clancy is humbled by those sort of comparisons. She is, after all, a girl from the provinces who learned to play rock and roll in hard working covers bands.

Born in Mangere and raised in Foxton from the age of six, Clancy left school at beginning of sixth form and went straight into a band. “I was working in a crappy factory in Levin and there was an access course next door. They were learning how to play and write music so I started hanging out there. I picked up a microphone and started singing — they kicked their singer out and we started playing the pub circuit. We were really shit.”

After years on the pub circuit, Clancy decided to back herself and step forward as a solo artist. “Because I’d been singing for a living, I was doing heaps of gigs that I hated. You find that when you sell your craft out you need a bit of time to stop and regroup. I moved from doing shitty pubs to cossie clubs and eventually to flash jazz places in Wellington and then corporate gigs in Malaysia doing Celine Dion. I reached my maximum – although I was earning heaps of money I needed to stop and concentrate on writing.”

So two years ago, Clancy travelled to Los Angeles and surprised herself. “It was to get my confidence up, broaden my horizons in a different environment, go into a hothouse. It certainly was that.”

There are a lot of hard working acts over there, she says. “I saw people selling themselves out, even if they were crap, because they believed in themselves. It made me think, I have supporters, I should give it a go. It was a kick in the arse.”

Clancy was received well in the USA and industry people told her to get an album together quick-smart. Most of the songs were written during her stay there, and recorded back here in NZ at Auckland’s York Street Studio.

The result, Lucky One, really is a pearler of an album. Clancy has a strong voice and a musical style that sits across the divide between alt-country and pop. The songs are about love and breakups, but they’re utterly convincing, well written and immaculately performed. She holds her voice back in the right places, delivering a broad range of emotion and a complete performance within each song.

“Dry Your Eyes” channels the Carpenters’ “Superstar” before hitting a glorious, hook-laden chorus. On the album’s closer, “Fool I Am”, she comes across like a contemporary rocking Sharon O’Neill. There are flashes of influence from artists as broad as Al Green and Ryan Adams. And the title track “Lucky One” just confirms her country influence.

Here’s the opener from the album Lucky One, called “Girl About Town”. Looks like there’s a new Sweetheart of the Rodeo in town.

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