The Selina Martin Triage

Always trying to get better

Selina Martin’s most recent release, Disaster Fantasies, didn’t make the Polaris Music Prize long list. I really thought that it did, for reasons above and beyond that I voted for it. Sometimes, faith is a weird thing—I thought it should have gotten there, so I assumed it did.

“I certainly hoped I would make it,” says Martin. “I fantasized about making it and about how that sort of recognition would make my life easier in terms of booking tours, selling albums [and] maybe getting a booking agent.”

Martin’s grandiose ambitions didn’t end there. She didn’t do the humble Canadian thing and trot out the line about how it’s nice to just get noticed. “I fantasized about winning the whole damn thing,” she says. That said, she also knows that winning awards—or getting nominated for them—is not the be-all and end-all.

“I keep doing what I'm doing regardless of winning awards. What matters the most to me is getting better at what I do [and] continuing to explore new things. I'm already excited about the direction I'm heading in for my next projects.”

For the uninitiated, Disaster Fantasies is a peculiar little record that many critics have had a hard time nailing down. A recent piece commented on the strange juxtaposition of sugary pop and “adult themes” on the record, while simultaneously saluting its intelligence and wit. And that’s kind of it— Disaster Fantasies is a very grown up record that shows its playfulness in the same breath as it shows, well, other things. In a way, it’s also a document.

“Without knowing it at first, writing this album was a way for me to process some pretty unhealthy things that were happening,” Martin explains. “I was in a long term relationship with someone who I thought was the love of my life. It was very intense. And it the whole scene still breaks my heart when I think of it—so I try not to. But the focus and energy required to make this thing, as well as the writing of it, I think both these things helped me extricate myself.”

Extrication is one thing, but it seems all Martin has done is leave one difficult place so she can hang out in another. The music industry isn’t exactly the most tenable place, after all. Still, Martin suggests that whatever Disaster Fantasies represents in the long run, in the short it’s a mile marker.

“This is about progressing,” she says, “like life, I think. The plan is to get better and better at what I do."

“I lose money when I make albums and when I tour [and] I'm trying to get better at losing less money. And I'm trying to get better as an artist. How will I know when I've gotten there? Don’t know. I imagine there's no real ‘there.’”