Album Review: Sarah Slean - The Baroness (2008)

Sarah Slean - The Baroness (2008)

Oh to be five years older, then I could court this fair Canadian songstress in all of her cabaret glory, especially now that her heart is finally out on her sleeve. Besides her pixie-like beauty and mystical presence, Sarah Slean is an excellent pianist and songwriter, and nowhere is that more apparent than on her 2008 exposé The Baroness.

Part autobiography, part cautionary tale on love, The Baroness is a stark musical departure from Slean’s last studio effort, the slightly bombastic Day One (2004). With Day One, Slean was able to infuse elements of rock and electronica with her signature cabaret presence, creating an incredibly enjoyable city of colorful music. However, over the next four years that city crumbled. In its ruins emerges a weathered soul, which is fiercely independent but admittedly lonely, as the ghost-like beauty of the cover art would suggest (let alone the album title’s reference of barren emptiness itself). Slean has always referenced the trials of love in her songs, but she usually channeled it through anecdotes, stories, and metaphors on a veil of bright music. Here, however, everything has been stripped, leaving only Sarah and her most personal feelings. Every song cuts deep, rolling along somber waves of bare yet organic instrumentation and production. Sarah’s piano is as haunting as her voice, and together they travel through love’s void. Occasionally, the guitar, bass, and drums chime in, but nothing ever really rocks, it just floods. While the music might not be as fun as before, it’s nonetheless arresting, like an arrow through the heart.

Lyrically, the songs range from darkly cynical to absolutely heartbreaking, such as shattering “Get Home” and the exuberant “Euphoria,” a pair of songs that tackle the schizophrenic aftermath of a one night stand (where else could you find something like that?). Slean’s cabaret spirit still exists on “Goodnight Trouble,” but it feels more like a funeral procession with horns, while “Notes From The Underground” rings to a desperate beat of ultimate loneliness. Another highlight is “Willow,” an aching ballad that provides a dependable beauty to dependable imagery. However, nothing is as all consuming or as defeating as “Shadowland,” where Sarah confesses her daemons and cries for the protection of love in a vein not all dissimilar from a somber Kate Bush armed with a piano. Fortunately, an optimistic silver lining appears with the gospel-like closing “Looking for Someone,” which is almost a too literal title, but I can’t actually believe that she needs to look for someone, I mean she had me at day one (bwahahah… *tear*).

It’s a harrowing collection, devastating at times, like a cathartic exorcism, but the warm melodies linger in a strange comforting way, as if to suggest that heartache and loneliness are just winter vistas that reoccur but never last forever (how Canadian!). In the end, Ms. Slean/The Baroness has given us a clear window to her soul, and I swear to God, if I ever find those responsible…

4/5

"I have been to the shadowland / I heard the empty call / Of hatred, anorexia / Misery and alcohol"

McS