Sarah Slean
Night Bugs

THE REVIEW

"Sarah who?!?" you probably asked yourself upon spotting her name among the reviews.
Canadian, born in 1977, at the end of the '90s Sarah Slean secured a contract with an independent label and quickly released an EP (“Universe”, 1997) and an album (“Blue Parade”, 1998) mainly consisting of piano and vocal ballads that align her with her more famous compatriot (and semi-namesake) Sarah McLachlan and the very early Tori Amos.
"How boring!" you might say, and indeed, you're not far off. Despite a good compositional vein that surfaces here and there, it all feels too familiar and neither adds nor subtracts from the now considerable array of piano-playing singer-songwriters.

However, the records achieve decent success in her homeland, and major labels start taking an interest in the still very young Slean, who signs a new contract with WEA. In 2002, “Night Bugs” finally comes out, musically representing a clear change of direction that alienates some of her early fans.
The shy and anonymous young girl from the first two works has transformed into a chanteuse at once refined and eccentric, intelligent and amusing. The piano still reigns supreme, but her songs are now adorned with elaborate arrangements, dense string sections, sudden brass outbursts, xylophones, glockenspiels, and various delightful adornments that create a deliciously over-the-top atmosphere.
Sarah's new sound is now closer to certain works by Rufus Wainwright or the records produced by Jon Brion for Fiona Apple. Apple immediately comes to mind, too, to describe Slean's smoky vocal timbre, even though the latter can boast far superior range and expressiveness.

The first three songs of the album alone would be sufficient to justify the purchase (as well as make many of her more famous and celebrated colleagues turn green with envy): “Eliot”, dedicated to the writer T. S. Eliot, initially immerses the listener in a smoky nightclub atmosphere before transforming into a majestic orchestral crescendo; “Weight”, a track filled with rancor and frustration (“Do you know the weight I’m under?/ Everything revolves around you, you and you/ Soon the shoulder falls”), is supported by a powerful piano line and relentless percussion throughout its duration, while “Duncan” is one of those unforgettable songs that stays with you forever: it opens with a dissonant piano melody before exploding into a rousing chorus (“Oh you fool, you fool/ Don’t give in to Fate!/ If this is all we’ve got to fight for / Rage my darling, rage!/…/This is holy war!/ We must fight and fight again”).

The rest of the album, though not reaching the heights of the first three songs, maintains absurdly high standards. Within the verses of “Drastic Measures”, one can trace the programmatic manifesto of the new ambitious Slean: “I should go to drastic measures / Steal enormous works of art / Write a piece for eighteen violins / It’s not a march but it’s a start/ … /Please say I will never be like that/ Safe / Politely dazed/ Politely crazy”.
“Book Smart, Street Stupid” (the title refers to the expression her father used to describe Sarah) is a sorrowful nocturnal ballad where her voice laden with passion is accompanied by her faithful piano and a melancholy section of brass. The incredibly versatile Slean also gifts us an intense instrumental for strings (“Dark Room”) arranged entirely by her, like the rest of the album.
“Sweet Ones” and “Bank Accounts” represent instead the more cheerful and carefree side of “Night Bugs”; the former, chosen as the single, manages to be catchy and contagious without descending into the banal, while the latter closes the album with a smile, even though behind its playful and somewhat frivolous atmosphere lies perhaps the most committed track of the entire album with its ironic critiques of modern materialistic and superficial society (“I have a future/ I have substantial bank accounts/ Make lots of money/ And hope it don’t run out/ I am a beauty/ It just takes me four to five hours a day/…/ What a disease when I put my faith in these").

It's not an album that changes the history of music forever, but certainly, in its genre, it is an almost unknown little masterpiece, give it a chance and I'm sure you won't regret it.

In 2004, Sarah released “Day One”, marking a shift towards a sunnier and more pop-rock style, expanding on the “uptempo” insights of “Night Bugs”; an excellent album, only slightly inferior to its extraordinary predecessor (but perhaps it deserves a review all to itself, sooner or later).

Sad Postscript: “Night Bugs” is unfortunately only published in Canada, so it can only be obtained through importation; there are websites where it can be purchased without breaking the bank but it is still a hassle, not to mention a real shame for Slean: certainly, her music is not Top 10 material but it would surely have its audience—go figure, the record labels…