“It’s an exciting time in music in general … A lot of those tried-and-
true boundaries are melting because they have to melt. The whole
infrastructure around live music, music sales, it’s all dissolving.”
nuts, you’re going to have fewer of those
moments.”
Like the business side of music, record-
ing is part of the duality Slean must
contend with to get her metaphysical
message out. Luckily, on Metaphysics,
she had top-notch help to make those
often painful portions of recording rela-
tively painless.
“There’s the physical matter that has
to be arranged and moved around and
there are very specific laws,” says Slean.
“I can’t just throw a mic up and expect
the piano to sound great. It has to be
managed. I like to work with people who
live in that sphere. They put in the 10,000
hours. They know what to do instinctively
and just do it.”
To that effect, she has high praise for
her collaborators on Metaphysics.
“Hawksley, I believe in 100 per cent.
It’s like we’ve been separated at birth.
He’s a really brilliant mind and that, first
and fore most, is what attracts me to an
artist. What do they think about? What’s
their metaphysics? What’s their world-
view? I feel like Hawksley’s worldview is
most decidedly on the magical side and
that delights me, it inspires me, it gets
music stirring inside me. I’m just such
a fan of his music. It drives me crazy he
wasn’t way more successful because I
think he should have been.”
On former Attack in Black member-
turned-versatile troubadour Dan
Romano: “I’m such a fan as well. I think
his songs are incredible and you could
strip them down and put them into any
costume and they’d still be great songs.
My respect for him is first and foremost
as a songwriter, but on the production
side he and his engineer are a great
team with great sounds.”
Slean credits Van Tassel with helping
to design the dreamy soundscapes that
pop up throughout Metaphysics. His
relaxed approach helped her dip her toe
back into the songwriting headspace, with
their sessions often involving more chat-
ting and tea than tinkering on the piano.
“He’s a fascinating musician,” she
says. “I would say he’s becoming a
sound designer. He’s really interested
in creating new sounds. He’s a kind of
sound architect.”
As mentioned, Slean herself took
on the hefty role of string arrangements
on Metaphysics, a task that came only
towards the end of pre-production.
“I don’t write the string arrange-
ments until the song is almost there,”
she explains. “For me, I start with
rhythm. I get the form of the song in
my head. I have the lyrics, the chord
changes, I have the sections. We start
in the studio with trying to figure out
where the groove lies.”
It’s been over half a decade since the
world heard new Sarah Slean music.
That’s a long time by the standards of
most album-tour-album-tour career
cycles, but in a metaphysical sense, it’s
been a blink of an eye. The world is bil-
lions of years old, so what’s another few
spins around the sun?
Her two decades as an active artist
speak to her vision of what her music
should be: a progressive mix of classical,
cabaret, and pop aimed at the pleasure
centres of the brain without stooping to
crass commercialism or cozying up to
what the suits think a radio hit should be.
That persistence has gotten her re-
spect from the start. This writer remem-
bers one of his first rock concerts, way
back in 1997, when Our Lady Peace
performed Slean’s version of their song
“Julia.”
Since those days when music was
dominated by the tried and tested
drums-bass-guitars set-up, the pop
world has shifted massively, driven by
sounds that largely originated in Can-
ada. Bands like Metric, The Dears, and
Arcade Fire have made strange instru-
mentation and experimentation du ri-
geur for any aspiring star. That raises the
question: Does Slean feel like the music
world has finally caught up to what she’s
been doing all along?
Yes and no. She’s a part of some-
thing bigger, as are we all, and that larger
picture is constantly shifting and chang-
ing, whether it’s pop music or some of
the concepts of human identity that were
once thought unchangeable.
“It’s an exciting time in music in gen-
eral,” she says. “Not the business part, but
the evolution of the art form. It’s really
changing significantly. A lot of those
tried and true boundaries are melting
because they have to melt. The whole
infrastructure around live music, music
sales, it’s all dissolving. The way people
find music now and discover music
isn’t by going into an HMV and flipping
through their genre. That is completely
dead. Genres are dying. I think that’s a
theme in the world right now as a whole.
Gender as a concept is becoming blurry
and unstable. All kinds of things like that
are shifting.
“Maybe that’s why music is shifting,
because it’s reflecting the times. It’s re-
flecting the shake-up of the old model
of get a job, work for 25 years, and retire.
Where does that exist? It doesn’t exist
anymore. The old structures are crum-
bling because they must… I think the
job of artists is to reflect their times. It’s
kind of a dream come true for true music
fans, but it’s also bewildering, because
how do you organize all that music? How
do you find it?”
Yet again, that theme comes back –
things dissolve and come back, because
music is eternal; or, as another wise mas-
ter of the audio arts once said, “ Every-
thing is everything.”
To Slean, that’s the wonderful
mystery of music. Genres dissolve into
each other and are reborn. It’s a hopeful
message, and one that applies to more
than music; it applies to everything. If all
music is one, maybe all humanity is, too.
During these politically troubled times,
the metaphysics of it provide a glimmer
of hope. “If we can take that to art,” she
sighs, “can we take that to the rest of the
world?”
It’s a hard question with no set
answers. But those kinds of questions
are what drive her art. Let’s just hope
she doesn’t take another half-decade to
ponder.
Adam Kovac is a freelance journalist
based out of Montreal.
C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N • 37