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Sarah Slean Gets Confessional

Toronto songstress Sarah Slean may have given her new fifth album the name of her alter-ego, The Baroness, but the personality explored on the disc is decidedly her own. It is her most lyrically direct and confessional yet, as she explained to Tandem recently. “There was more artifice and embellishments on my other records, but decidedly not so on this one. It is a little disconcerting to be that naked!”

That is exemplified by the first single, “Get Home,” a candid look at the experience of being “the other woman.”

“This is the most straightforward narrative I think I’ve ever written,” Slean explains. “This has happened a few times in my life — these sorts of relationships. I wondered why I was on something of a tape loop in that respect. I had all this anger and bitterness, and I wanted to close this chapter completely. Instead of writing little songs about these individual letdowns or betrayals, I just wanted to put it in one song and wanted it to be over. It was like this song was a charm. The moment I wrote it, it was as if I purged this demon and I knew it would never happen again.”

Her emotional openness on The Baroness is neatly complemented by the music. Although the inventive use of strings, a Slean trademark, is again prominent, the record’s focus remains on her fluent piano playing and gorgeously strong and pure vocals. “I actually wrote a lot of these songs on the guitar, which is half the reason for their musical simplicity,” she notes.

Slean’s recording career now spans over a decade, and it has won her a significantly sized and loyal fan base in Canada. Her previous studio album, 2004’s Day One, which received releases in 10 countries, and produced breakthrough singles “Lucky Me” and “Mary.”

She recently signed with a New York-based management company that also handles kindred spirit Rufus Wainwright, so the potential for boosting her international profile is strong.

Creative inspiration for the songs on The Baroness actually came from a recent residence in Paris. Given Slean’s love of all things French and the influence of cabaret on her music, this was a logical choice for the relocation (and dislocation) she finds stimulating to the muse. “In order for me to create, I sometimes need to take myself out of a comfortable situation and return to an ignorance and innocence that is exciting but also rejuvenating. It’s like when you pick up an instrument you don’t understand you come up with all these new little melodies. The music is new to you again and I felt like I had to do that in life, to start thinking differently, to uproot my philosophies. Where better to do that than in the city of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir?” she reflects.

Once back in Toronto, Slean was able to reflect on her Parisian experiences and emotions and complete songs she had begun there. To record The Baroness, she re-connected with her co-producer and engineer, Jagori Tanna. Considering Tanna is best known as guitarist and chief songwriter for hard rock favourites I Mother Earth, this may seem an unlikely pairing, but the two had worked together well on Orphan Music, Slean’s 2006 live album.

“It became so comfortable in terms of trying stuff, I just went ‘why would you stop?’ Jag’s a really great engineer and a gentle guy so that’s great for neurotic artists like myself,” she adds, with a chuckle. The pair set up a small recording studio in Slean’s downtown Toronto house, a place where “we got all the grunt work done, sketching out the songs so that when we got into the studio we knew exactly what we were going to do. “It was just very comfortable. You make yourself a nice cup of tea, have a little chat, and then do it.

“He helped me get some gear and we set up a very small recording studio around my piano in one of the little rooms in my house. That’s where we got all the grunt work done, sketching out the songs so that when we got into the studio we knew exactly what we were going to do.” Most of the vocals on The Baroness were recorded in Slean’s home studio, and the relaxed intimacy of this setting is reflected on the album. “It was just very comfortable,” says Sarah. “You make yourself a nice cup of tea, have a little chat, then do it.” Sessions at local studios with a cast of A-list players followed, while internationally-famed mixer David Bottrill (Muse, Peter Gabriel, Tool) captured those results with real clarity.” Slean sums up the process as “the best recording experience I’ve had.”

by Kerry Doole

April 6, 2008
Tandem