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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman (AOL Music)
by Tabassum Siddiqui

Whatever happened to the renaissance artist? Y’know, those multifaceted talents who could just as easily sing an aria as paint a portrait, or effortlessly toss off lines of lyrical poetry in between composing tricky melodies. Today’s culture, as fizzy and consumable as the “pop” prefix that usually precedes it, doesn’t exactly encourage great feats of artistry. So it’s rare to come across an artistic hyphenate like Sarah Slean. The Toronto-based piano songstress hasn’t just been writing classically-tinged pop drenched with drama and passion for the past decade, she’s also an accomplished painter, published poet, and Gemini Award-nominated actress. Most of us have trouble just putting in a day at the office—how on earth does she do it all?

“It’s called an ulcer!” the raven-haired, impeccably dressed singer jokes over lunch at a downtown café. “Sometimes I wake up and I’m seriously anxious about how to use the time. When you’re in a good place, it’s like you’re a bubbly drink, like a bottle of champagne,” she smiles. “I think now that the music’s done and I’m really proud and happy with that, I can now channel my energy into other things.”

In typical Slean fashion, the route to making her “emotionally naked” new album The Baroness took some twists and turns along the way—including a seven-month sojourn in Paris in 2006, the culmination of a lifelong dream (funded by her Canadian and overseas record labels when their “financial stars aligned,” the singer points out gleefully). “When I left here, I was sick of who I was in Toronto, sick of that identity, and I just wanted to start over again,” Slean explains. “But when I got there, I felt very alone—I didn’t have any friends or speak the language properly, and when you live in a tiny apartment away from anyone alone with your thoughts, you’re in a madness of sorts that took me three months to really conquer…

“But then it was the Paris experience that I’d dreamed of,” she continues, excitedly. “It was the international dinner parties, it was volunteering at Shakespeare & Company, much wine and revelry… And there’s really nothing like riding on the back of a motorbike in Paris at dawn—I really can’t think of any equal. It was everything I dreamed about and more.”

But it wasn’t until months after returning home that the seeds of Slean’s Paris experience began to germinate into song. Between attending classes in music and philosophy at the University of Toronto—“it’s the longest undergraduate degree in history!” the singer laughs, adding she’s “bound and determined to finish” next year—Slean hunkered down at home and in the studio. Producer Jagori Tanna (I Mother Earth) encouraged her to strip away the intricate embellishments of her previous records to better suit the emotionally raw tenor of the lyrics Slean was writing about relationships, loneliness, and identity.

“I’m really happy with the result. Five years ago I would not have been, because I think a lot of that decoration was hiding the sentiment. But now I’m 30 and worldly and know who I am,” she laughs.

Musically, The Baroness steers away from the melodramatic cabaret stylings of Slean’s last few albums and offers a surprisingly rhythmic pop template that draws nearly as much on acoustic guitar as Slean’s signature piano melodies. “I’m still pretty fumble-y on [the guitar]. It’s still music, it’s still just chords you’re dealing with, but there’s a freshness to it," she says. "I think it’s about shaking loose your norms. You’ve got to push the reset button sometimes.”

And it seems she’s constantly hitting that switch, whether beginning work on a series of new paintings for her second art show, tentatively scheduled for this summer—Slean’s surrealistic, narrative-based images evoke both the whimsy and darkness of her songs—which is also when her second book of poetry should come out. She refuses to call herself an actor despite her Gemini-nominated turn in the 2006 CBC drama Black Widow, but jokes that she’s always up for getting dolled up in vintage gear, as in the video for new single “Get Home,” which boasts an old Hollywood glamour aesthetic.Even though she’s ostensibly a pop musician on a major label (Warner Music Canada), Slean shrugs off the nondescript top-40 tunes pumping through the restaurant speakers. “Almost more than ever, I feel like I don’t understand the music today, whatever’s popular. But I’m okay with that.” She’s more interested in the work of contemporaries like British electro-folk iconoclasts Goldfrapp, or Swedish singer El Perro del Mar. But for Slean, good ol’ Beethoven reigns supreme over any blog-approved musical fodder—which is just as well, because even before she gets around to finishing her long-in-the-works musical drama, she’s got to ace her classical-music exams.

“I try to keep my foot in that world, because I never was a classical pianist—but I’m getting better at orchestral arranging,” says Slean, who writes her own arrangements for the sweeping string sections on her albums. “The idea of, ‘This world will never die!’ There’s something so thrilling about that. Music is music—it’s sound and silence, right? It’s arranging pitches and chords. But it’s amazing, the diversity that can result.”

Slean will be putting her studies and myriad other pursuits on hold while touring the globe in support of The Baroness over the next year—she’s hoping to make some inroads into the U.S. now that she shares management with kindred spirit Rufus Wainwright—and an eventual return to Paris is inevitable thanks to a deal with Warner France. But wherever her muse happens to carry her, Slean continues to create art in all its forms, based on the simplest of inspirations.

“I think it’s the headspace of finding wonder again—finding awe,” she muses. “I like to say that my whole raison d’etre now is finding awe. Whenever I have that spark, everything’s fine.”

March 27, 2008
AOL Music - Listen to Sarah’s AOL SESSIONS recordings