Sinéad X Sanders on traumatic brain injuries, cognitive dissonance, and a long-awaited killer debut

There’s a striking moment in the press release for Sinéad X. Sanders’ debut album, Them Shadows, which launches this Saturday at the WISE Hall. We are told this: “She picked up a guitar and took to singing her heart out at just 9 years old. After a car accident at age 13 left her with a fractured skull, she went on to face not insignificant challenges with the various tasks required to make an indie music career happen—hence the late debut.”

She began playing music at age 9? And as young as she may still look, what’s this about a "late" debut? Just how young is she, exactly?

“I’m under 40 and that’s all I’m sayin’,” Sanders responds with a laugh. “I first started performing in elementary school, beginning with choir, and eventually singing on my own in school talent shows and the like. I had every intention of music being my focus, and then some guy ran a red light and my skull was fractured, and suddenly it became difficult to focus on very much at all. Issues with concentration, planning and time management, slower processing speeds, dizzy spells, fatigue, and ensuing depression and anxiety made high school a hellish experience.”

To this day, Sanders is still affected by Traumatic Brain Injury symptoms, but she has also found ways of managing. For one, she ended up in alternative education at City School, which was, sadly, defunded last year. Its alum, she points out, also included Orville Peck and Joe Abbott. She cut her course load in half, split Grade 12 over two years, and wound up graduating with honours. 

“Basically, I just needed extra time and the right environment to accomplish what I needed to do," Sanders says. "And I think that’s proven true with my music career, as well.”

If you’re a habitue of venues like the Railway Club and the Princeton, you’ve no doubt caught Sanders at work; she’s been playing “mostly solo” shows since she was in her early 20s.

“Solo was easier than coordinating with other people, and honestly I was concerned that my issues with time management would make it difficult for me to lock in with a band," Sanders says. "But eventually I got the guts to start going to the jams around town, particularly at the Railway Club and the Princeton, and was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was I capable of keeping time with a band, but I was good enough that all these pros, who I’d been so nervous to play with, kept encouraging me to come back.”

Indeed, her first LP, Them Shadows, has quite the roster of local talent pulling support duty. Every name on it but one is someone this writer has seen, spoken to, interacted with on social media, and has sometimes pestered to sign a record, including: Jimmy Roy, Stephen Nikleva, Sandy “Bone” Smith, Dave “DD” Dykhuizen, Bob Petterson, Mike van Eyes, Felix Fung, Marc L’Eseperance, Rusty Tones, Sara Wazani, and… okay, I don’t know if I know Joseph Lubinsky-Mast, the upright bassist. But I’ve probably seen him play!

Outside of the record, Sanders has worked with a host of familiar names. She's done background vocals for Colleen Rennison, Stephen Hamm, and former Little Guitar Army singer Bert Man's current project Crummy, which apparently has a new record coming out sometime in the new year, which Sanders says is great.

Some of the Vancouver music scene stalwarts listed above are the same ones who caught her act early on, and who count as her most stalwart supporters.

“I’ve made bandmates out of those pros who I’m still playing with today, a decade later," Sanders says. "And throughout that decade, I’ve heard the recurring questions: ‘What are you still doing here, why aren't you hitting the road, and why aren’t you recording?’”

If you’ve noticed that Sanders has been a bit less active on stages in Vancouver this past year, it’s because she’s finally been pouring her considerable energies into recording her debut.

“I finally made the decision to pull back on live gigs, take all the experience I got and musical connections made, and put it into Them Shadows," she shares. "Slow but steady, and after such a long wait, I think we got a great result.”

The title track and “Wishes to the Fishes” are directly inspired by her aforesaid experiences, from the impact of her injury to “plowing through” to her present success.



It's a terrific record. “Not Your Gal,” in particular (which is not the song the aformentioned press release tells us to focus on, but writers seldom do what they’re told) is a sassy, 1920s-style toe tapper that could have come off a Billie Holliday 78 rpm; you could imagine it melting the heart of even a vintage music snob like Robert Crumb.

Sanders describes it as an “old-timey original”, which is a pretty clever turn of phrase.

“I have certainly been influenced and inspired by music dating back to the 1920s," she notes. "But ‘Not Your Gal’ just came together in my head at a point when I was in my 20s, and in-between relationships, setting boundaries for myself and others, and getting a dance tune out of it at the same time.”

Another high point is “Coca Cola,” a mid-tempo rocker with a smoky vocal that evokes Lucinda Williams. The opening couplet of “I don’t care about Coca-Cola/ I couldn’t care less if they took the world over”, is a bit of an interesting paradox. In the first line, she’s striking a blow at a mega-corporation, but in the next, she's passively assenting to their conquering the world. So what’s going on there?

“It’s about corporate greed and apathy," Sanders explains. “And cognitive dissonance.”

That is a perfect description of the effect the lyrics have; they leave you questioning not only what the singer means, but your own values. It turns out to be pretty easy to inhabit both positions at the same time, even though it shouldn't be! 

Short version: we’re impressed. 

“I started writing it while traveling in Spain,” Sanders says. “It was my first time traveling that far from home. On really hot days, on some streets, they suspend these white sheets between the tops of the buildings to provide shelter from the sun. I was out walking and looked up toward the sky, and all I could see was this white sheet—with a Coca-Cola logo in the middle of it. I was looking for the Spanish sun and instead I found an advertisement from a major-polluting corporation, based all the way back on my home continent.

"Later I went down to Morocco," she continues, "and during train rides through the plains, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, you wouldn’t see anything for ages until some billboard would show up, or some lone pitstop gas station, and an entire wall of it would be a Coca-Cola ad. It was bizarre to be somewhere so foreign and witness the reach of these corporations. And uncomfortable to consider both the implications of letting it happen, and the perceived futility in trying to fight it.”

If the opening lines are a paradox, by the end of the song, we’re almost in the territory of, dare we say it, conspiracy theory: “Don’t you tell me that it’s all connected/‘Cause I see what I like/ And don’t need no one to wreck it.” The line is inspired, she says, by the conversations she had with people, dealing—or more not dealing, she notes—with the cognitive dissonance created by being both anti-corporate and apathetic.

“We don’t wanna feel like our consumer decisions make any big difference—we don’t want to feel like we need to stand up to big corporations," Sanders says. "We all just want to feel happy and comfortable. It’s not always convenient to see the implications of our lifestyles beyond ourselves.”

Besides Sanders herself, the album has an abundance of guitar power, with Dykhuizen and Roy both playing lap steel, Dykhuizen and Nikleva both credited with electric guitars, and Dykhuizen also contributing some slide guitar. One would need sharp ears to pick out who is playing what (I have my theories). But why so many guitarists?

“Dave, Stephen and Jimmy are three of my favourite guitarists of all time,” Sanders notes. “I’m thrilled to have all three of them both on the album and at the show. I first met Jimmy and Stephen, along with Mike Van Eyes and the rest of the Rocket Revellers, when I started playing the Saturday jams at the Railway Club in late 2013. Shortly after that I started going to the Princeton Pub’s Tuesday night jam, hosted by Sandy and Dave.

"I locked in with those two so well that they became my first band, and I’ve been playing with them ever since," she continues. "I got to know Bob Petterson through the late great Bob Mercer, and got him in on bass. But I’ve also kept playing with both Jimmy and Stephen in various contexts over the years.

The core band is with Dykhuizen, Petterson, and Sandy "Bone" Smith, but Sanders tells us she did a separate three-song session with Roy on lap steel, Nikleva on guitar, and Joseph Lubinsky-Mast on bass, with Smith again on drums.

“There are two songs from that session on the record, ‘Extraordinary’ and ‘Not Your Gal.’ The last song from that session will be released as a single later next year. Mike Van Eyes also recorded some piano on the album."

That means four Rocket Revellers appear on the record, and they'll be in Sanders' band when she plays the WISE Hall this weekend.”

Rusty Tones, who Sanders met while recording background vocals for Colleen Rennison’s last album, Persephone, will also be on hand to do an opening set.

Sounds like a great Saturday night.

And by the way, the song the press release we started this story with actually suggested we focus on was "Extraordinary".  Sanders is happy to answer questions about the track. 

"'Extraordinary' is about exploitation and how it changes depending on where you are physically or personally," she says. "Abuse of some individuals is acceptable in some places, but not others. Being extraordinary—out of the ordinary—can get either get you celebrated, or subjugated, depending on who and where you are."