Hearing Sandrine sing for the first time is the aural equivalent to those eagerly
welcomed, spirit-lifting days when a spring thaw arrives, after a long cold winter. The
Australian’s voice is wise-beyond-her-years: warm in tone, hopeful in feel, and infused
with a natural sensuality. Her North American debut album, Dark Fades Into The Light,
is the end result of an extraordinary musical, emotional and geographical journey that
took her from the rugged Blue Mountain range of Australia to the gentler Catskills
outside of Woodstock, where she recorded with producer Malcolm Burn, the former Daniel
Lanois protégé who has produced and/or played with such artists as Patti Smith, Bob
Dylan, Emmylou Harris and Rachael Yamagata.
Sandrine started performing the moment she could stand on stage, or in front of a
church congregation. Her minister father loved music, and turned his family into a
Partridge Family of the religious kind. He moved them from the Blue Mountains area west
of Sydney to New Zealand when Sandrine was six and organized them into an itinerant
Christian music group called the Cornerstone Family. Sandrine explains, “ We recorded
an album at home and then went on the road. My father got a bus that we converted into
a home, and we went around selling albums and performing as a band. At the time I
played a really cool instrument called an Omnichord. One of my sisters played piano,
another played bass, and my brother played drums. It seemed like second nature to me,
singing in front of crowds. In church, everyone sings really loudly no matter what your
voice sounds like. That’s where I learned about music.”
Though the church songs left an indelible impression with Sandrine, she rebelled as a
teenager and moved out of the family house when she was 15 and into a trailer (or
caravan as she calls it) in the backyard. She took a job as a waitress at a café where
her customers brought her samples of the secular music she’d been denied the
opportunity to hear in the past. Sandrine recalls, “The first record someone gave me
was the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, and I just sat in the caravan and listened and
thought ‘Oh my God, this is excellent.’ I sat there and wrote songs, and soon after
that, I left home. I traveled a lot and picked up the guitar because it’s a portable
instrument and I could write on it -- which I did for the next two years. Then I came
back and settled in Sydney, where I wrote the first album.”
In 2004, Sandrine released Trigger in Australia and immediately caused a stir. The
title track made it into the Top 20 of the Australian pop charts and a huge commercial
station named her Songwriter of the Year. U.S. major labels took notice and even Gene
Simmons of Kiss, who runs his own label, insisted on meeting her when he passed through
Sydney. But her rapidly rising profile soon took a surreal turn. Rather than being
perceived as the self-motivated singer-songwriter she was, Sandrine was seen by some as
a willowy blonde pop confection offered up by a major label. Her artistic gifts were
overshadowed by frenzied tabloid speculation about exactly what she meant when she sang
that her finger was on the trigger “and I’m thinking of you.” It was further fueled by
a playfully racy, webcam-themed video – think Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” if Fiona
actually looked like she was having fun romping around in her underwear. The fact that
Sandrine was a minister’s daughter lent the newspaper stories a good-girl-gone-bad
twist.
“It definitely set me back,” Sandrine explains. “When I would go out to play, people
were always surprised by me, almost shocked that I was a real musician. It also made my
label at the time hanker to really push me as a new artist.”
When Sandrine was ready to write and record Dark Fades Into The Light, she was
determined to do it on her own terms; the first step was to find a producer outside of
Australia. She sent out demos to several American producers, including Malcolm Burn.
“A number of people did get back to me, but in the end I really liked the way Malcolm
wanted to work,” Sandrine says. “He does stuff really live and in a natural way. My
first record sounded quite produced, and I didn’t love it, so I wanted the next album
to be a bit raw.”
Sandrine traveled to Burn’s residential studio, which he’d built in a large Victorian
house not far from Woodstock, New York. Though they planned ..ting perhaps three
songs, their chemistry as collaborators and the nurturing atmosphere of the place
encouraged them to keep the tape rolling. Says Sandrine, “I came up there with a pile
of songs. Wurlitzers and vintage keyboards were what I was into playing at home. When I
got there, I started playing Malcolm’s pianos – real pianos – and found them so great
to play and write on. Every day I would get up and play the piano and write a song and
Malcolm would be like, ‘That’s pretty good; we should record that.’ In the end, he
really believed in what I was doing, so we did the whole album. Half of the songs were
ones that I’d come over with; others were ones I came up with on the spot.”
Sandrine’s melodies incorporate elements of classic sixties pop with a dreamy sort of
contemporary neo-soul; she makes even her most confessional of songs instantly hummable
by embedding them with subtle yet addictive little hooks. As she sings in the upbeat
“Where Do We Go?,” which has already gained considerable exposure in France as part of
a TV ad for the FNAC music chain, “I made a U turn/And I’m still alive.” Sandrine is
now residing in New York State with Burn in work as well as in life; she’s starting to
venture back on to the live stage, with gigs at Levon Helm’s upstate Ramble event and
at some downtown Manhattan clubs. On such open-hearted tracks as “Let the Love” and
“It’s OK,” Dark Fades Into The Light is something of a celebration – of artistic
independence and of sheer survival, of daring to fall in love and of the simple joys
that come from making music every day.
What goin on? How's things in Kingston... I just finished a record out here in California and will be playing some shows on the east coast. I'd love to connect with ya. Jeremy
Hi Sandrine, I really like the vibe on your page...let me know what you think of my instrumental stuff if you get a chance....have a beautiful spring ! Simon
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