A SAGE OF THE ARTS
By Al Kaufman
Comparing Rachael Sage to other musicians would not do her justice. To say she is a piano playing Ani DiFranco without the vitriol, or a jazzy Tori Amos without the navel gazing, would pigeonhole her. No, if we are forced to describe Rachael Sage with one word, that word would be “artist;” not in the pretentious, Prince way, but in the true meaning of someone who has a great talent in and love for the arts.
A piano player and songwriter by age four, and also an accomplished ballerina and painter, the arts got Sage through her childhood. While most of us angry youths slammed our doors and blared the Ramones or the Cure, Sage painted and wrote poetry or songs in her bedroom to get through her awkward years. This included enduring time at an all-girls grammar school where the length of one’s skirt was more important than the person inside it. It was an atmosphere Sage could not relate to and chose to opt out of.
“I definitely made peace by the time I was about 12 that I was choosing to commit myself to at least one craft [ballet] very fully,” she says. “And I rationalized that with that came the sacrifice of not necessarily having the time and energy to devote to trying to climb the social ladder. I reached a point where I decided it was fruitless to try to be liked, or even to try to stay out of people’s way.”
As she got older, her concentration began to slowly shift from ballet to piano and songwriting. Her overprotective Jewish parents made her attend college rather than try to ink a deal with a record label. This led to Sage selling her own master demos at shows, and eventually evolved into her starting her own label, MPress. Her latest release, the delightfully engaging THE BLISTERING SUN, is the seventh on the label. Like her mentor, DiFranco, Sage enjoys the business aspects as much as the creative aspects, even if it only allows her four hours of sleep a night. Although major labels have come knocking, she has turned them all down.
“There’s an aspect of control, control freakishness maybe, but my personality lends itself to enjoying both business and art and trying to look at it all as art in some way.”
The self-produced THE BLISTERING SUN is an artist’s record, but is as accessible as any of the inferior fodder that gets played on pop radio. Her brightly colored songs are speckled with strings and horns. The jubilant opener, “Alright, OK,” recalls the vocal phrasings of DiFranco, while “Violet or Blue” harkens back to ‘70s jazz rock. It’s all funneled through Sage’s crystalline vocals and garners just enough emotion, hope, humor and self-effacement to be disarming. It’s intelligent pop without begging you to notice just how clever it is.
That said, Sage is not above using her songs as a means to an end. “If they wanted to use ‘Alright, OK’ in a Target commercial, I would be all about it,” she says. Her idea is to draw new people into her fold. Once there, they would hear haunting songs such as “93 Maidens,” based on the letters of Jewish teenager Chaya Feldman, whose Warsaw class chose to swallow poison rather than submit to the Nazis.
But first she needs people to know she’s out there. If that means having her song play during the closing credits of DAWSON’S CREEK, that’s just fine by her. She says, “If it’s not relevant, if it’s not engaging with the world, you might as well just hang out in your bedroom tinkering with your four-track.”
While Sage may not think much of the hanging out in your bedroom technique, it is essentially the way she spent her early years. If everyone else’s results end up as impressive as hers, it should be required for all musicians.
Artist Site
CD $12.98 @ Amazon.com
Rachael Sage @ MySpace, with MP3's
