From: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org (navy-soup-digest) To: navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Subject: navy-soup-digest V7 #107 Reply-To: navy-soup@smoe.org Sender: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-navy-soup-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk navy-soup-digest Friday, November 26 2004 Volume 07 : Number 107 In This Digest: ----------------- Sarah interview on UmbrellaTV ["Tab Siddiqui" ] Eye: Slean machine [Paul Schreiber ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:01:04 +0000 From: "Tab Siddiqui" Subject: Sarah interview on UmbrellaTV up now, at: http://www.umbrellamusic.com - - t. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 15:28:02 -0800 From: Paul Schreiber Subject: Eye: Slean machine http://eye.net/eye/issue/issue_11.25.04/music/slean.html eye - 11.25.04 Slean machine [SARAH SLEAN Opening for Ron Sexsmith. Thu, Nov 25. The Music Hall, 147 Danforth. $25 from Rotate This, Soundscapes, ticketpro.ca, 416-645-9090] BY TABASSUM SIDDIQUI Sarah Slean isn't a tortured soul, she just plays one on CD. And forget about that fairy/elf/sprite stuff, though she does sport wings on the back cover of her latest CD. Truth is, the Pickering-bred piano songstress is one tough cookie, having single-mindedly overseen a steady career that now encompasses four albums over the past six years. Slean's latest, Day One, with its fanciful imagery and cabaret-style sound, has done nothing to quell the quasi-mystical shroud in which some critics seem to want to envelop her. In fact, practically every story written on her lately has breathlessly played up how she sequestered herself in a cabin in the woods near Ottawa in the months leading up to making the album. That may make for a charming tale, but much like Slean's songs themselves, it's what lies underneath that's really interesting. "Something in me just kind of broke down," Slean explains over a crackling phone while riding in her tour van over the bridge to PEI. "I'm obsessed with the notion of trying to live a noble existence, and doing as little harm as possible. And I couldn't really reconcile the way I chose to live my life with being noble. It seemed to me sort of vain and indulgent. The advertising, the posturing, the ambition just started to absolutely disgust me -- it was like I got the nausea that existentialists talk about, and I couldn't shake it. So I had to do something drastic." A return to the big city prompted some changes. Slean enlisted producers Peter Prilesnik (Sarah Harmer) and Dan Kurtz (Feist) to construct a more rhythmic template for Day One in the line of her favourite Radiohead albums. There were more adjustments -- last year, Slean parted ways with her long-time manager and signed up with current tour-mate Ron Sexsmith's management. And while she's now at peace with being on a major label (Warner), she wasn't too happy with the way they dropped the ball after her buoyant 2002 single/video, "Sweet Ones," gained momentum. "They don't want to spend money," Slean says, "and they look at me and go, 'You're not Avril Lavigne, we're not spending 50 grand on another video. Why would we?' It's a Catch-22 with record companies because there's so much risk involved. Especially nowadays, when records aren't selling as they used to. I'm just going to continue to do my thing like all the other songwriters out there. It's who you are, it's what you do. The bumblebee doesn't go, 'Hmm, well, what should I do today? Should I do bumblebee things? Do I have integrity as a bumblebee?' A bumblebee is just a bumblebee." Slean's own headlining cross-Canada tour is expected in March; she hopes to finish the stage musical she's been working on, Boy Wonder, in January, and next month, she'll really get to indulge her theatrical bent when she stars as notorious Hamilton murderess Evelyn Dick in Black Widow, a musical film due for release late next year. And as if that weren't enough, the accomplished painter even put together a book of poetry and paintings that's being sold at her shows. Her art may start off in the shadows, but Slean hopes all her projects shed some light on what it means to be human. "I think all art comes from one place, and that's the sort of backdrop of negation -- that blackness, the beginning-ness where your nameless, faceless soul is," she says. "It all comes from there. And if you can get there, it's thrilling." ------------------------------ End of navy-soup-digest V7 #107 *******************************