Today marks the premiere of “Clearer,” the new music video from Nicola Thoms. The song was featured on BBC Introducing. According to Nicola, “I wrote this as a bit of an eye opener song. After going through a period of not knowing where I was going both with my career and my personal life, I took a step back and had a revelation that everything is not as daunting as we often let ourselves think and with a bit of perspective you can see everything in a much clearer manner.”
Hailing from East London, Nicola attended the prestigious Brit School of Performing Arts, followed by taking an honors degree from the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance. Influenced by soul and R&B artists such as Lauryn Hill, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder, along with contemporary artists like Jhene Aiko, Nao and Amy Winehouse, Nicola blends pop and R&B elements into her own distinctive sound.
“Clearer” begins with cool keyboard pulsations followed by Thoms’ affluent voice and a polyrhythmic beat. The R&B melody exudes hints of pop filaments flowing within, providing the tune with a buoyant tangible energy. While the keyboards establish the middle sonic colors, bright synth tones contrast with the pulsing bass, delivering radiant intersecting harmonics of graceful charm. Effulgent background vocal harmonies add depth and resonance to Thoms’ fabulous voice.
Thoms’ voice emanates a variety of delicious timbres and tones, from crystalline opulence to lush atmospheric shades. It’s creamy with clarity and sparkling nuances resulting from her precise phrasing and inflection, one of those rare voices discharging enchanting sparks of dazzling dynamism. Put simply, her vocal chops are superlative liberating warm textures you can listen to forever.
The lyrics express Thoms’ eye-opening discovery that one’s belvedere may alter from opaque to translucent, depending on the viewer’s state of mind and rationale. In other words, simply changing the glasses one is looking through changes the panorama of life from cloudy to “clearer.”
“My eyes are getting wider / I can see what I was blind to (before) / The nights are getting brighter / In my heart / Time to get my mind straight.” And then sublimely heady chorus: “And it all, and it all seems a little clearer now / And it all, and it all seems a little clearer somehow.”
The video, directed by Ruaraid Achilleos-Sarl, depicts Thoms as she discovers a new outlook. Night shots mixed with forest scenes delineate her shifting perspective and its animating effects.
“Clearer” offers an effervescent R&B pop-flavored melody chock-full of infectious blushing rhythm and Thoms’ enticing voice, a voice that emancipates a rainbow of compelling sonority. Thoms knows how to deliver the goods, and “Clearer” is the gorgeous endowment.