Writing, recording and producing a single album is a labour of love for musicians. Tack on a second disc and you have twice the amount of writing, recording, producing and therefore, twice the time and money.

This was a challenge that Toronto singer-songwriter Sarah Slean was willing to take on with her latest release, the double-disc recording entitled Land and Sea.

It’s been three years since Slean released her last disc, The Baroness, an album she calls the back cover to a book about her life up until then.

“(The Baroness) was the end of a really stormy, tumultuous 20s,” Slean says by phone. “I did all kinds of travelling, made all kinds of mistakes, did all kinds of searching, had lots of bad relationships, made business decisions that were terrible - I experienced the whole gamut.

“I also had some great highs as well. The Baroness was just ending a chapter of extremes. I have a new footing now with Land and Sea. I have a clear understanding of who I am and what I can do.”

Through YouTube, Slean has released a series of behind the scenes videos chronicling the recording process of Land and Sea leading up to its release on Sept. 27.

Slean explains in one video that when she sat down to write for this disc, the songs were coming out in two very different streams - a pop music stream that turned into the material on the Land disc, and an orchestral stream that turned into the material on the Sea disc.

“Those streams have always been present in my music, but in their infant stages, like on (major label debut) Night Bugs, I sort of patched them together, or I would smear some orchestral colour on top of a pop song. I’d have some cabaret, but I’d put in a rock band with it. I would try to make them exist together.

“I feel like both of those influences have really found their clarity. The lyrical voice is very clear and separate for Land and for Sea,” Slean says of the double-album.

“You can’t really try to ram these into one song, and you can’t have this beautiful ballad followed by this crazy rock song. They seem to be really separate audio worlds. I wanted the listener to be able to experience them both that way, without having to sort of ping pong back and forth or be jolted out of one.”

Being coupled together, Land and Sea can be seen as one complete record, or two very different records that complement each other.

“Land is a perspective of being here, in this time and place on planet earth as a particular person in a particular situation. It’s the specificity of your existence right now.”

Compared to Sea which, like its namesake, is an infinite, mysterious entity that ebbs and flows and exists in each of our lives.

“You feel this incredible presence, an eternal presence that’s an undying, timeless thing. It’s the force of life itself. (Sea is) when you go beyond self and the specific person rooted in this time and place. I think that’s what gives the finite self its rich meaning.”

Read more from this interview in Kaeleigh Ayre’s blog at www.uniter.ca, including what it was like to work with producer Joel Plaskett and what Slean’s tour must-haves are.

Published in Volume 66, Number 10 of The Uniter (November 2, 2011)