From the depths of her pop-laced shadowy cabaret tunes, with a message, she calls: We need a revolution.
Sarah Slean’s social-consciousness has been surfacing through her music since her independent EP debut, Universe, in 1997. Since then, the Canadian’s voice has been widely heard through her 2002 release, Night Bugs and 2004’s Day One, albums that earned the songstress two Juno nominations, including Adult Alternative Album of the Year in 2005.
In an age of madness, aggressiveness and destruction, Slean declared, “the radical thing that we have to do as humans is to lay down arms; to trust each other.” Now in reality, these sound like words escaping the lips of a madman, but the singer-songwriter insists that trust and unity are big steps; steps that are needed for change. “It’s a revolutionary act!” she exclaimed.
Slean has set a strapping mood for change with Day One, with messages deeper than the much talked about heartbreak and personal depression surrounding the album (The artist retreated to an isolated cabin to face her troubles, darkness and demons head on, where the core of this album emerged). She harbours deep thoughts concerning the poor, deteriorating condition of Earth. “Humanity is getting worse at taking care of itself and the planet. We’re going to pay for that, we are already,” she observed.
“We are very conscious of our material and physical needs, but we neglect the soul, we neglect the heart, and a starvation results,” Slean said. “The madness that is in the world today is a symptom.”
It is in this urgency that she calls all “passioneers”, a people she presented as “heart soldier[s]; revolutionar[ies] whose message is joy and feeding the heart rather than the pocket,” to wake, stand, unite and bring change.
In Slean’s eyes, every era has “a crisis of their time.”
“There have been generations before us who thought the world was coming to an end, and were very certain it will in their lifetime,” she said.
But it is not the end of the world, not then and not now. She has a positive view of the world, and faith in humanity: a new day and a new plan. A silver lining shines from Slean’s dark rhythmic sound, music that is not cries of agony or complaints, but “a call for peace in a radical way” she upheld.
