Montreal Folk-Pop Artist Clare Siobhan Looks on Betrayal with Healing Humor in New Single “I Built A House with an Arsonist”
Too many of us know what it’s like to feel like you’re building a relationship with someone, only for that person to burn it all down. Montreal-based folk-pop artist Clare Siobhan offers a clever, heartfelt take on the situation with her new single “I Built a House with an Arsonist” – available now – from her forthcoming EP Seek the Sun.
“I wrote the song as a playful exploration of bad habits, and my own rose-coloured-glasses, benefit-of-the-doubt tendencies in my personal life,” Clare explains. “The whole feeling of the song for me is that sometimes you’re so ready to jump into a new adventure that you don’t stop to consider you might burn a few houses down along the way.”
Oh, I built a house with an arsonist
And I let him pick out the rugs
They went up so fast, somehow I was aghast
When I met him, he seemed nice enough
Clare was conscious of creating a Sara Bareilles-type feel, with heartbeat-reminiscent drums among the pianos and vocals and harmonies. And though the song mostly looks at betrayal with humor, it also conveys deep empathy. In fact, when Clare posted a portion of the song to TikTok before it was finished, the reception was overwhelming.
“People really loved the song, and were relating it to really challenging situations in their lives: breakups, divorces, difficult relationships, and feelings of personal betrayal from loved ones,” Clare recalls. “What the audience was connecting to was completely different from my own inspiration for the song – I’d written it with a much lighter heart and hadn’t infused any of my own heaviness into the lyrics when I wrote them.”
The TikTok reception ultimately influenced the song in its final form, with Clare honouring the personal stories people had shared with her. “In the final version, I feel you can hear some of that: the driving drumbeat, the swelling harmonies, the emotion I tried to release in the vocals. I really appreciated the feedback from the audience in those early stages of writing, and it helped breathe new life into the song during the final arrangement.”
The song is the third release from Clare’s forthcoming EP Seek The Sun, following “Flare” and “3/2 (Loves Me),” a work that, as its title suggests, is about optimism and finding a way out of the darkness. It’s a compendium in which Clare reflects on her life so far, meditating on her twenties and that decade’s joys and challenges.
“Seek the Sun” is a kaleidoscopic folk-pop experience for the modern age, blending genres effortlessly through masterful production and musical collaboration. With the mainstream appeal of Lizzy McAlpine paired with notes of Feist, Joni Mitchell, and Lucy Dacus, Clare delivers her message in a voice all her own.
Clare Siobhan is a genre-blending East Coast artist with a voice beyond her years. With her distinctive, rich alto voice, she paints pictures of love and loss, hope and fear, stillness and change through her deeply personal and introspective lyrics. Accompanied by solo piano, a full band, or a choir of her own harmonies, Siobhan’s music is a folk-pop-soul exploration of movement, growth, and light.
Care to introduce yourself?
For sure! I’m a Nova Scotian musician and speech-language pathologist based in Montreal, QC. I’m a singer-songwriter, and I’ve been writing and performing my original music for about 7 or 8 years now. I’ve been releasing my originals for about 5 years, and two weeks ago I released my debut EP, Seek the Sun!
Tell us about the process of writing and recording “I Built a House with an Arsonist”?
I initially wrote the song with playful intentions, to basically joke about my own rose-coloured glasses habits, and my tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt to a point where it starts to hinder my own self-preservation at times. I posted a little snippet of the tongue-in-cheek song to TikTok, where it really resonated deeply with a huge number of people – to date, the original video has over 300,000 views on the app. The people who were finding meaning in it were relating it to very serious challenges in their lives – divorce, difficult relationships, personal betrayal.
This huge reaction to the song was so meaningful to me, and I wanted to honour the depth of these listeners’ connections with the song when I recorded it. I wanted to keep the feeling serious, while still allowing some room for light and levity, and I think with the final product we were able to accomplish that. The final arrangement is very close to that original video – just piano, drums, and bass, and then a couple of my own background vocals to really polish it off.
What’s it like being a musician in Montreal?
I’ve been living in Montreal for the past few years while completing my master’s degree, and I decided to stick around after my program. Since I was studying full-time during my first two years here, I’ve mostly had the privilege of being an audience member at tons of fabulous shows. The venues here are excellent, and the music scene is super vibrant. Now that I’m back in the city and no longer studying, I’m eager to get myself out there and start playing shows myself, as fun as it is to be an audience member. I’ve got my first show this coming Friday, actually – I’m playing an EP release show with my friends Kyleigh Hyacinth and Sophie Lane at Café Tuyo, and I can’t wait to make my Montreal debut!
Who was the first and most recent Canadian artist to blow you away?
Ooh, that’s a good question. The first ones that come to mind are Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, and Spirit of the West – my siblings and I were raised on their music, and they still feature very heavily in our playlists today. More recently, one of the albums I’ve had on repeat is Good Friends from Terra Spencer and Ben Caplan. Terra has such a beautiful way with words, and the arrangement of all the songs is so stunning – I know Mr. M and Messy from that album almost by heart now. I’m also a new fan of Bells Larsen. I really love his writing and he’s great live; I’ve seen him perform a few times here in Montreal, and I love the storytelling he does with and in between songs in his sets.
You’ve been making music for a bit of time now, what’s one piece of advice you can offer to those starting out?
One of the best things I’ve done for myself as a musician is to be a very frequent listener and audience member. I try to listen to new albums like other people read the news, and it helps me keep track of what’s current, and how people are innovating musically. Same with live shows – the more performances I can see, the better, and the more I learn about what I next want to integrate into my own style of live performance. I think the best thing you can do for yourself as an artist is to always seek sources of inspiration, and what better way to do that than through the art of others in your community?