KLARA Walks Clash Through Debut Album ‘Blossom’

It's a track by track guide...

Swedish-born, London-based songwriter KLARA has always been searching for ways to express herself.

In tune with her own emotions, KLARA has a beautiful sense of touch, knowing exactly how much pressure she should exude.

New album 'Blossom' is the finishing point on a long journey, but it's also the opening leg of a new one.

Both a process and a destination, 'Blossom' became the means for KLARA to gather her thoughts, to distill these varied experiences.

Out now, it's an enchanting document, with each song moving into the next, building into this over-arching narrative of hope, trust, and connection.

KLARA walks Clash through her magical debut LP…

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PLAYGROUNDHOUSE

I wrote this song with a dream of finding someone to love, someone to feel completely at ease with as if I had come home. I remember standing in my bedroom in Maida Vale where I was living at the time, playing my guitar and looking out through the window in the evening sun, thinking about that first moment when you meet someone and feel that it might blossom into something beautiful but it’s way too early to say.

I CAN’T SPEAK FOR YOU

I wrote this song together with the composer Dan Weinberg and we discussed the feeling of when you are in a relationship but communication has somehow broken down. That you can only speak for yourself and not for the other person but still somehow you end up imagining what the other person is going through and all you wish for is for the relationship to grow and to wake up seeing the world in beautiful bright colours again.

STRONG

When you are not being true to yourself but you know the relationship isn’t right. You keep undervaluing yourself to make the constellation of these two humans work. You are trying your best but the other person is not truly there with you. You live for those wonderful moments that still happen between you but they are not enough to make it a happy, healthy togetherness. Instead it’s consuming you. Through it all you are trying to look strong in front of the other person, to impress them but that is still not the complete truth. 

VOICES

I was feeling angry and fearful as the political climate in both the UK and US just got darker and darker. I was so down about the cruel behaviour that was exposed about the likes of Harvey Weinstein and the political darkness at the time with Trump and Brexit. It felt to me as if the loudest voices were telling the most lies and I just didn’t feel represented.

I went on a Women’s March in Paris, anti-Trump and anti-Brexit marches in London. I felt so depressed watching the news that I had to go on a news-detox for a few weeks and during that time I wrote ‘Voices’ as it felt good to put my thoughts into the lyrics of my song.

LAURA

This song came from seeing a homeless woman from time to time in the area where I used to live. I started writing the song from my imagination but half-way through writing about her I wanted to truly hear her story to get the song right, so I asked her for an interview. It turns out the life she had lived was so dark and she had gone through so much but she was still standing.

She was abused at a young age, she dealt with feelings of not belonging anywhere and the darkness that comes with that. She told me she found ways to cope. Her favourite thing to do when she was a child was to take her bike and cycle along the beach in LA where she grew up and as the tide drains away from the shore she used to watch all the small animals in the sand.

One magic thing about the writing process was that I had named the song 'Laura' before I had introduced myself to her for the first time. When I did introduce myself, I couldn’t believe what a coincidence it was when she told me her name… it was Laura.

These themes are new to me as I used to mainly write about relationships and emotions & my inner world but it’s interesting and feels important to express my thoughts about the outer world too when it feels too dark.

BROKEN

When you lose trust in someone, you lose some of the love you have for them. It’s up to them to prove themselves and for you to see if you have it in you to forgive them.

BLOSSOM

Lyrically the title track ‘Blossom’ is about hopes and dreams. How we carry them with us close to our hearts and are sometimes too shy to show them to others. How we dream big and work hard at the same time as feeling fragile. We all feel lonely and isolated sometimes even while being surrounded by others. Even though we might have achieved many of our dreams that were once just a seed of thought, we somehow manage to still feel like we are the ones looking in from the outside.

FALLING

This is another song that also has political undertones but this time considers the plight of refugees. They would have never gone through the absolute horrible things they have endured to get here, unless they were running from a war zone and a life in pieces. I think many of us are guilty of being scared and looking the other way as it’s too dark to fathom.

BREATHE

Sometime space is the only thing that can make you see life clearly and give you answers.

ANOTHER YOU

This song is about grief, darkness and walking someone else through their pain. How we learn to cope when we fall & we break. We want to feel secure and not alone but instead learn that we have to let someone go.

WHERE DO WE BEGIN

We might crumble, we might cave in so where do we begin to get back to feeling alright again.

OUR FINEST

This is the only love song I have ever written… about happy love anyway.

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