Kiss From a Siren
14 November 2025
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As I joined the call and sat down to speak with Clara, I had a list of questions ready to be asked in their pre-set order. Immediately upon exchanging our hellos, I was met by Clara’s warmness and lightness which completely calmed me and changed what I had anticipated to be a question-and-answer style interview into an insightful and free-flowing conversation.
Rift was released on the 7th of March, after what I found out to be a long but rewarding writing and recording process. ‘How do you feel about the album being out?’, I initially asked. ‘It feels quite emotional […], seeing other people carrying the songs with them rather than just me carrying them’, Clara replied. ‘It’s quite a weird feeling, carrying a project like that and now it’s just suddenly out in the world? I feel like I’m in free foil […], like I’ve just jumped out of a plane and I’m falling, not in a bad way though’, Clara laughs.
Part of what drew me to Clara’s music was her gift of storytelling and the poeticness of her words. When I asked Clara what the album meant to her, she replied with the same lyrical elegance that you find in her music. ‘The album was a way of accepting a lot of sadness and things that I felt were broken that I knew would never be mended to look the same way as before they were broken […], and accepting that things change and loving things in their reassembled shapes, or trying to’. She told me that the record was a way of processing the contradictions that she has within herself; the rift which reveals both the light and dark parts of her being. ‘I wanted people to feel like they were looking into my world’.
Intimacy is found in Clara’s lyrics but is also found in the album’s production. With minimal instrumentation – only piano, guitar and a soft beat on occasion – supporting Clara’s voice, I was intrigued as to whether this was done on purpose. ‘The songs need to stand on their own’, Clara tells me. ‘I’m not trying to hide behind instrumentation, not behind more than I already am in metaphor lyrically’, she continues. Another reason for the minimal instrumentation is that Clara tours solo with no band, and so replicates the album live by accompanying herself on the piano and guitar, switching between instruments throughout the show.
Before chatting to Clara, I knew of her classical upbringing, but was eager to know more. Clara was a classical pianist growing up, completing all her grades and teaching while she was still a teenager, as well as singing in choirs. I wondered how Clara transitioned from the classical world to the one she has now found with Rift. ‘When I was about sixteen, one day I just thought to myself, I don’t actually enjoy this anymore […], I still love classical music, but I found that the world can be quite restrictive. Clara recounted how she used to get so nervous before giving a piano recital that her knees would shake, which interestingly never happened when she sang, which her little sister pointed out after watching Clara give her first-ever gig. ‘Playing and singing live is the most me I feel […], the most uninhibited I feel’.
Clara will be touring throughout April and May, with headline tours in London, Edinburgh, Manchester and Bristol. The album comprises ten tracks, delicately crafted to show every nuance of Clara’s voice. ‘Do you have a favourite track on the album?’, I asked as a closing question. ‘It changes, but I’m really excited to play the piano tracks towards the end of the set, like The Dream’, Clara told me. ‘It feels like coming home’. Listening to the track, one can’t help but notice the tone of the piano, which is mellow and rustic; I can imagine Clara playing an ageing piano, each strike she makes bringing out and adding to the instrument’s history. The rawness of the music is beautiful.
Rift is streaming on all platforms now.
