EXTENDED ARTIST BIOGRAPHY:

A little less than two years ago Claire Rivers picked up a guitar with the fierce determination to learn just enough to unleash the sounds inside. Falling completely in love with the instrument and the songwriting process at large, she decided to learn a little bit more than just enough. Along with becoming acquainted with the guitar she also came to learn piano, basic recording and engineering skills, and fundamental theory. She then wrote sixty songs and realized she was going to be living inside the sound for some time to come. This is her first album and a flag in the sand to mark the start of the long learning process and many strange adventures yet to come.
Hailing from the folky psychedelic soundscape of Austin Texas, a city where the skyscrapers still dustily echo the musical movements of the 60's and 70's, she put on her boots and settled down in the small town of Olympia, Washington. An infamous college town trapped within a time capsule of the 80's and 90's, a city where the streets still swim with ghosts of the grunge, punk, gothic, and riot girl movements of the (more than ever), relevant past.
The resulting sounds of occupied space and innate nature are nostalgic and eclectic, something like retracing old roots and growing strange new flowers. Her stripped down sound in this first half of the album is feral yet soothing, a lullaby for lions. The purity of a novice hand combined with the depth of a wise heart authentically display a full spectrum of emotion that is both relatable and otherworldly. Something that could only be expected from a domesticated alien that’s still a little rough around the edges.
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ALBUM STATEMENT/INTRODUCTION:

“There is nothing better than love. It feels good because it is the good. Love is what happens when we connect deeply with another sentient being because love is the way we experience the mysterious paradox of being the one appearing to be many. Love is the mystery aware of the mystery, so when we plumb the depths of our being we fall in love with ourselves.” - Jesus and the Lost Goddess (the secret teachings of the Original Christians)
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“And it could be a prostitute or it could be your pain, but at the end of love you’re gonna have to pay, at the end of love you’re gonna have to pray.” -IPFL
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IPFL explores themes of self resurrection and recreation using love as a metaphor for religion and religion as metaphor for love. The first half of the album, Side A: “the caged bird sings”, is a stripped down singer songwriter showcase with gentle acoustic emphasis. The soon to be released side B: “Finally In The Fire” will be electric guitar based and somewhat more produced with echoes of a full band feel. Tying the two sides of the same sky together will be the transitional albums "Ashes to Ashes" and "Dust to Dust".Side A: “I Begged For Freedom” is the silence before the storm, the ash before the rise of the phoenix bird. The motif of christ on the cross represents the consciousness of a god divided into multiplicity, the cross is a barrier which signifies the simultaneous divide and union between god and man, heaven and earth, the one and the many, ego and expansiveness. To be hung on the cross is to be suspended between conceptual modes of existence. The cross is a structured space of liminality. A waiting room for self sacrifice. Much like Odin’s self suspension for wisdom or the archetypal hanged man it is through dying that on the cross that Jesus frees himself from the ignorance of ego. The cross of light is set to fire and in the ashes of understanding we are offered the chance to renew ourselves, but were must set ourselves aflame to become the Phoenix. The third motif is that of an artist an addict. Imagine christ on a canvas instead of a cross.
In the process of putting together this album I studied the mythic lineage of the traceable love and sex goddesses as they transform over time from ancient Sumerian figures into modern day deities. An evolution which begs the question, if that old magic were alive today , how would it move through contemporary times? Witnessing the alteration and adaptation of old time religion displays the endurance of inspiration, it shows us how myth mirrors and adapts to society. Religious evolution alters the lens in which we see love. If you really want to try and understand love, you have to try on every pair of glasses.
Within the walls of the tower of Babel(on) all language was one. Love is the ultimate language, and music, is the ultimate love language. To participate in music is to be back within the walls of the tower of Babel(on). To immerse yourself in music is to wander back into the city of Babylon, one of the earliest images of utopia. Unlike Eden, it is a place that is described as having actually existed in reality as we know it. A reminder that heaven can be a place on earth. Art is the yellow brick road that will bring us back to Babylon. Art allows us to create our own worlds, so why can’t we create our own heavens? Even if you choose not to create, you can still walk the roads that the women of heaven have set before us.
In following these women with their many mysteries spun into the dazzling darkness, I found an anchor in the whore of Babylon and therefor in the undying archetype of the prostitute throughout time.
In mythology and religious scripture we see her as an allegory for ego attachment to the physical world and the separation of psyche from consciousness (i.,e Sophia, *Helen of Troy, *Isis (supposedly both in Tyre), Mary Magdalene, and even Aphrodite in some tales). More symbolically, the woman of the oldest profession often embodies elements of the archetypal independent, the outsider, the keeper of secrets, the survivor, the hidden mystic, she who knows herself. In addition, there is the over arching theme of the transmutation of pain, she who turns what she is condemned for into a means of self sustainment, she is the sorceress, the alchemist, she who gives all, she who knows love and therefor knows god.
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