Sarah Slean's simple life

Juno-nominated singer-pianist gives it all away as she strips her life down to bare necessities

MUSIC

Sydney - You can't accuse Sarah Slean of being a material girl.
Fresh off a 2003 Juno nomation for best new artist, the pianist-singer decided to strip her life down to the bare neccesities before recording her latest album, giving away all of her furniture and leaving her Toronto apartment for a log cabin outside of Ottawa.
"It was nothing in particular, it was just like what I like to call a click of the mind," Slean told Cape Breton Post during a recent telephone interview. "I had such a nausea. Somwething went wrong with my view of the world and I was sort of weary with the despair and the frivolity and pretentiousness and uselessness of the world � it's so easy to find it if you're looking for it. "I wanted to trim my life. That was one of the things that was bothering me. I felt like there was so much excess everywhere. There was too much visual information everywhere, being assaulted by advertising and lines and colours and people and noise and garbage. I wanted to completely and utterly simplify."
Simplify she did.
Packing only her baby grand piano, some music by Artists like Jimmie Rodgers, Tom Waits, Radiohead, Howie Beck and Maria Callas, and books by philosophers Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre, Slean spent the next four-and-a-half months getting in touch with her inner self and, perhaps more importantly, rediscovering her passion for music.
While she hadn't planned to write and compose during what amounted to a spiritual retreat, a creatively recharged Slean emerged with the makings of her fourth album, Day One, which is up for best aldult alternative album at the Juno Awards, Sunday.
"That's what happened and that was a nice treat to discover about myself � that (music) is genuinely something that I want to do and that it's part of my makeup and my blood," said the 27-year old Pickering, Ont. native. "It's not something that a current of life just sort of swept me into and then I just followed it because it was the way it was going, because it was momentum. It wasn't that way. I think it is a genuine part of me."
In fact, it's so much a part of her that Slean is arlready planning to start work on a new record later this year. And rather than withdraw when the world wears her down, she plans to use it to her advantage.
"I find that frustration and negative emotions are real good to turn around into music; you sort of hshove it thorugh the valve and it prays out", she said. "I think that's what you have to dow ith your frustration and hte loneliness and the wearines. If you don't, it will jhut eat you alie. You're got to sort of be an alchemist with negative meotions and the endlessness and the ruthlessness of the road."
Now, after spending the pastyear living out of her suitcase and crashing with friends, the only thing left for Slean to do is find a new home.
"It's getting ridiculous right now. I need to buy a bed," she said. "I'm testing the lmits of my friends' patience."
Slean, along with opening act Justin Rutledge, will be performing at the Membertou Trade and Convention Centre, Tuesday, April 5, at 8:00 PM. For tickets (Reserved seating), visit the MTCC box office, or phone 539-2300
CCONNORS@CBPOST.COM


------------------------------

I thought I'd transcribe it for you, apologies for any errors, I was on a short typing time.