B l u e P a r a d e - A S a r a h S l e a n F a n s i t e
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By STEVE KAKLAMANOS
Sarah Slean and Emm Gryner are easily two of the most promising solo acts on the Toronto music scene ("Promising" in the sense that they're going places. As to their current abilities -- They're ALREADY fantastic). If you haven't yet had the pleasure, all indications are that you'll be hearing plenty from them soon enough. Not only have they been delighting audiences with their live shows for a while now, but their respective releases (Emm's CD debut, "the original leap year" and Sarah's cassette EP, "Universe") are at a level of quality that's simply striking.
Though they're both individual artists, I had good reason for interviewing them jointly. It seems like half of their performances have been on a series of shared bills (most often triple bills, along with Noah Mintz of "Noah's Arkweld" and hHead fame). In other words, this was a great opportunity to raise awareness of such shows and to urge people to take advantage of them. Furthermore, the fact that the two are close friends seemed to be the perfect formula for a fun interview; and indeed it was. I STILL laugh my ass off when I listen to the tape! You had to be there.
So... after they finished up a heated, yet friendly argument over the merits of the latest Gandharvas song, the interview was underway.
I first asked them how they got into music... and sent them into loud protestations with the suggestion that they were child prodigies.
"Oh no! Not prodigies!" shouted Sarah, though I reminded her that she started playing piano at age seven, and was composing her own songs by nine. I then asked Emm what the story was in her case.
"Um, five... but I didn't really write songs until I was, like, ten," she insisted. ("Oh, that changes everything!" I thought. Such modesty).
"My parents put me into piano lessons, so that introduced me to what music was," Emm continued. "And then I started listening to the radio, and that's when I started to fall in love with songs. (As for going into music professionally) It wasn't really a conscious decision. There's just a point where you can't imagine doing anything else."
"I was in piano lessons, also at an early age," said Sarah. "And I just loved it. I never didn't like it, and I never had to be told to practise. I loved the sound, the acoustics, and the feel of the vibrations. Music is very close to that... primordial... stuff... that everyone tries to get at, through art in some way. I love visual art and literature too, but music is worlds away. There are no language barriers, and it's multi-dimensional and timeless."
One thing that makes Emm's and Sarah's albums interesting is the way they utilise certain themes and motifs in their work. For example, Emm's CD plays out like a diary, with the songs tracing a year in her life.
"It wasn't a conscious decision to do that, at first. I was kind of writing songs that had references to days and times of the year and stuff. And then, sort of half-way through writing the album, I decided that it would be interesting to put it out that way. It's not really an obvious concept album, but if you pay attention to the lyrics, you can see how each song fits into the year. It all stems back to when I was younger, and my brothers used to sneak into my room and read my diary... and how I thought it was an invasion. But have you ever read anyone's diary, or rather a journal of someone's thoughts? (note: How did Sarah and I answer? You'll never know!) With people... there's a real fascination with that kind of stuff."
"So, this time you figured you'd just let everyone in, so they could see?" I asked.
"Yeah."
Sarah's EP, on the other hand, may not be a concept album, but it does feature some recurring themes. On a couple of the songs, I seemed to notice the idea of, either a higher power (God, or the Universe as Mother Goddess) not being too pleased with us, or us humans figuring that S/He wouldn't be.
"(Sarah laughs) Well, I remember in high school we were talking about "Deism", which was the idea that God made the world and just set it aside and left it -- to see what happens. I imagined God up there laughing with his chums and going, "Holy shit! They're making a mess of it down there! Things are so much better on... Saturn!" (Emm's laughing) I'm not really cynical about life on earth, but I think there are millions of ways to live that are better. I think that the way people think around here is that humans are the center of the universe. As if we're "all- important". But we're a little piece of spit in the universe! So, I don't really think that... there's God up there shaking his finger, but I was thinking about human attitudes, along those lines."
At this point the ladies hear James Brown's "Livin' in America" coming through the wall, and they break into a duet (Something that seems to happen often, when they get together). Emm's got the funky attitude down pat, but Sarah's screechin' "OW!!" is downright scary too! Pretty cool... bootleg!
After this little musical interlude, we get back to the albums... One of the stand-out tracks from Emm's CD is the incredibly soulful "Doomsday". It's the last track on the album, and I think this is very appropriate, considering the song's lyrical content. While there are allusions to conflict in other spots on the album, "Doomsday" reads very much like a resolution, in that there's a sense of Emm being completely at peace -- even in the face of a fictional apocalypse coming. I wondered if the song was consciously placed at the end of the album, to serve as the culmination of a growth experience.
"Yeah. That's a good question. It definitely is a resolution, and it just seemed like the right track to put at the end. A couple of the songs on the album were about a certain relationship, as were some other lines in other songs. And they're all about the conflict. And it's kind of like when you have an argument with someone. You argue for like two hours, and then you go away and think, "Well, when it comes right down to it, it doesn't really matter." If the world's gonna blow up, you're not really gonna care that someone you love was an asshole to you."
I also asked Emm about a "pointed" little song called "Hook Machine".
"It was written about finishing my album. I was just sending out tapes to a couple of record companies, and a record company in the States responded, but they said that they didn't think my songs were catchy enough."
In this reporters opinion, the people have no ears.
"So I wrote this song to say, "Well, if you want me to write a catchy song, I can write one, but it doesn't take much effort, and it's not gonna mean anything." So it was just something to do for fun. You know, it's an all right song and everything. But the person who initially said that the songs weren't catchy was really anxious to sign me about two months ago."
"Ooh, isn't it ironic?" mused Sarah (To which all three of us added a spontaneous, "Don'tcha think?!")
Next on the agenda was my attempt to draw some good stories out of Sarah's songs. She's got plenty, as anyone who's seen her show knows. My first pick was a song called "Rockstar", which is not on the EP, but would be a sure pick for her debut CD.
"It's about this singer. He gets really, really big in the music industry and, all of a sudden, he starts thinking he's more special than anyone else. Which is soooo funny, because there are always gonna be people who are better than you. What makes a musician more special than a doctor or a kindergarten teacher? And he just thinks he's THE SHIT. His videos are all -- his face, and he's turned into a parody of himself. It's sad, but funny. How can you live here and be arrogant? How can you be anything but extremely humble? I don't understand that."
The song is evidently about a real person, judging from Emm's intermittent, sisterly attacks on the cad in question.
"You can basically write that I was rudely stood up by a big Canadian rock star," Sarah clarifies. I told her I didn't have to report on personal matters if she didn't want me to, but she was insistent...
"Stood up. STOOD UP!! I waited by the phone like a loser!! Augh!! "(singing) Mr. Bigshot..." One of my best lyrics. Written out of anger."
There's a song that IS on the EP, however, that also has a notable story attached to it, though it occurred after it was written. "I know" is a song that deals with tensions between the sexes, and with women feeling the slings and arrows of various forms of violence and oppression.
"We were playing in Kingston, and nobody was listening. No one gave a shit. And then ten minutes into my show, I was playing "I know"... and there was a drunken stag from upstairs and they all came down and sat two feet in front of me. They were totally loud, drunk and obnoxious, yelling, "Hey chick! Hey chick! Play Zeppelin!" and yelling other rude stuff. That got me thinking again about the feelings in "I know", and it was just kind of ironic that I was singing it, while they were acting this way. So, it was a bad day for me, and it was kind of depressing; but at the same time, I found it moving, for myself, 'cause I spoke out against them and sang the song -- which illustrated my point exactly."
Finally, I brought up a current issue among female musicians. Some just want to call themselves musicians -- period. Others beg to differ, arguing that being a woman is an integral part of how they write and perform. I asked the ladies where they stood on this issue, as well as how they viewed the controversies surrounding Lilith Fair.
"Hmm, that's a good question," said Sarah, pondering the issue. "I don't even know where I am with this whole thing. It just makes me laugh that now everyone's saying, "Oh it's "Women in music!" and women are so good all of a sudden -- and it's a good "crop" this year." And I'm like, "Okay whatever." Jane Siberry has been around for how long? She's a genius! In any case, if you call yourself a "female act", in a way I think that is so limiting... because OF COURSE being a woman contributes so much to what you have to say. It's completely different than being a man. We are different. But we've still got to consider each other as individuals, as HUMANS, as people that have something to offer. I don't understand why people want to illustrate the differences so much. And I don't understand why women doing things is such a novelty. Did anybody in Lollapalooza last year call that "The All Men Festival?"
"I think it's just comes down to a lot of ignorance," Emm agreed. "I mean, when people compare me to someone, they always pick a female... when my influences aren't always female. I listen to Tori Amos, and I just picked up on Joni Mitchell, but I've been listening to all kinds of music. I call myself a musician first, and a female musician second. A "female" -- that's just to describe me. It's not everything about me. I mean, I was in Lilith fair (I played on the "village stage"), and before I went into it, I was kind of skeptical. It was like, okay, I wouldn't have bought a ticket for this. But then being there... it changed my mind about it. It went from me thinking it was kind of a lame idea, to something that was really empowering. Just take Sarah McLachlan who organised the whole thing... She took it to all the way to being the best tour of the summer! And it was called a "celebration of women in music." Which means that they were celebrating, like, YEARS of it."
"...Always being there and always making good music, whether they were recognised or not," Sarah added.
Ultimately, both Sarah and Emm were convinced that the festival's success lay in the fact that the music was just so good -- not in its all-female lineup.
"And just as a footnote, it was the classiest festival that I've ever been to," declared Emm. "It poured through my set on Friday, and everyone was just there, listening, in the rain. The people were there for the music. It wasn't all about drinking and moshing."
Yeah, and I bet nobody called for Led Zeppelin either.
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