The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

A jobbing soul singer puts her love of Erykah Badu and Jill Scott to one side and finds inspiration in Robyn instead; she kills off the big ballads and gives it out with gob, just like she does in real life. “Don’t starve myself to be the lollipop kid,” she sings on ‘I Don’t Have A Story’. “Eight years on, and I’ve served my apprenta-shit / Now I’m ready for some big me time, but I’m not gonna strip.”

Attagirl. She’s a 5’1” Scouser - a pocket rocket of an electro pop star in the making - but get this right now… her name is not Alice Klar. Alice Klar is a band - a collaboration between Toni James, frontwoman, and Christian Badzura, a classically trained pianist with a penchant for cutting a killer beat.

“Everything I’m not, he is,” says Toni. “He’s a real muso - an amazing musician - and I’m not trained like he is. He’s really laid-back too, and I’m full of energy. It works really well. And I’m tiny and he’s six-seven.”

They make quite a pair - a one plus one equals three equation - and they’re bringing the best out of each other. There’s a three-track demo doing the rounds at the moment that’s something of a re-invention for them both. “I’d got to the point where I wanted to do something different,” continues Toni. “I worked out that I had more to say than I could in a soul song. As a person, I say what I see - Roy Walker-style - but in my music, I was always trying to be like the singers I was influenced by. With the new stuff, I don’t feel like I’m looking up to anyone. It just feels like me and I not feeling any pressure.”

So, of course, Toni does have a story, but part two has only just begun. Another class lyric, from ‘Môntag’: “I’m on a mission and I don’t need no permission / You look so hazy / Don’t fuckin’ faze me.”

“As soon as Christian played me ‘Montag’, the lyrics just fell out,” says Toni. “It shocked me and it shocked a lot of other people. But my mum loves my new stuff. I’ve just been to the Isle of Man to see her and we were both drunk and dancing till half-five in the morning. I never normally listen to myself, but she kept playing the eight songs we’ve finished over and over again.”