Pop: Songs from a shy sexpot lonely land

Jane Siberry revisits her childhood in her latest album. Here, she tells Glyn Brown the benefits of being single, the joys of being wooed by Brian Eno, and a few stories of flying cows

For all its wide sky, its expanse of lakes, rivers and mountains, Canada - more truthfully, the Canadian mentality - is occasionally cramping to a certain sort of mind. Still, in some ways, domestic and provincial, its unspoken rules can be stultifying. But for certain fine-tuned women - Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Smart (author of that emotional hurricane By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept), kd lang - those rules are a catalyst. No one shows the creativity that can come from being pressed down better than the singer/ songwriter Jane Siberry. A shy sexpot, a brainy ex-waitress, an explorer of untrodden musical terrain, her sound mixes jazz, rock, blues and a touch of the ambient (Brian Eno begged to work with her) with elliptical, cooingly seductive vocals. The results can be funny, unbearably moving, or startlingly eccentric. Partly because of this, she gets right up some people's noses, and her most recent release, Teenager, plays straight into her detractors' hands.

Siberry's eighth album, it is a set of re-recorded songs she wrote in her teens and, though touching, gentle and unaffected, it has also got a track about a squirrel, and one about a flying cow. Definite fruitcake, then? Not entirely. Jane can take a rise out of herself with the best of them. Working on the album, she admits she had to sing and play guitar at the same time, because that's the way she did it at 16. "Back then I used to lie on my bed strumming for hours: this time round, the audience was very understanding when I found I couldn't play the songs unless I was lying down."

Siberry doesn't play lying down any more and, though she may be diffident, at 41 she's old enough to be fairly shameless, too; at her recent performance at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, she grooved across the stage in a lace top and tight avocado hipsters, growling, purring and smooching strangely sensuous songs, white-blonde hair in a fetching Aniston cut that made her look about 25.

Hers is an autonomy that wasn't easily won. She was born in Toronto, daughter of a strong-willed mother and investment banker father, and her family was an intense one - "full of not just love, that's for sure". A solitary kid, she found comfort by escaping the house, "so I could have my own energy, a field clear of my mom's control". Around this time, Jane adopted her aunt's married surname. "My real name's Stewart, but I took the name Siberry because this woman and her husband were the first couple I ever met where I could feel the love between them, and I held that in front of me as a reference point." Childhood stuff came barrelling back a few years ago, when "I got very low, though now I think it was old depression leaving. I didn't know anyone could cry so much. I thought I was mad, really thought I was about to be committed."

From the songs she writes about her background, which are many, you'd never pick out that disturbance - Siberry's schtick, if you can call it that, is forgiveness and an attempt at a wider understanding. In "Flirting is a Flow Thing", one of her cooler, be-bop numbers, she'll croon about flirting with "a woman, or a man, a rock, a good plate of linguini".

"That," she explains, watching me warily during our talk, expecting every philistine hack to pounce at any moment, "is about exchanging energy, enjoying a thing." Sensing acquiescence, she enlarges on the positive exchange of energies you can get, if you're lucky, from the most unexpected quarter. "It's such ... a wondrous thing to see a really good waitress." (Siberry's an authority here, having used tips to finance her fist LP in 1981.) "Especially an older woman who knows how to serve. It's usually in diners or something, and it really is their kingdom. Their queendom. And they can make or break your day. But, when they choose to be a positive force, it's almost like ... a hospital or something, you know? That frumpy old woman can be a link to an era when people understood what graciousness was, and luxury, and you'd speak with a softer voice. A lot of single people come in for their regular grilled cheese sandwich - they're spoken to, and it might be the only time during the day."

It's not implausible that Siberry, lately, could be that single person. Having cut loose from WEA/Sire to become head honcho of her own Sheeba label, she works in something of a vacuum. The freedom has made her prolific - a new LP comes out in June, followed by three live CDs, a short-story trilogy and a novel. ("Fortunately I sleep with myself, so I get anything I want.") All these will be interesting, but not, perhaps, as interesting as an airborne cow.

I guess you're the kind of person who wishes they could fly? "Wish I could fly?" An eyebrow levitates in gentle surprise. "Well, but doesn't everyone? In our sleep, don't we astral travel?"

Not the same. When I was seven, I spent a whole day leaping off a table waiting for take-off. Each time, I thought, I'm really going to focus on this now. She snorts, and doesn't think that's mad at all. "But you understood it was concentration that would allow you to do it, which is how you achieve what you need."

Slightly ethereal but super-concentrated, the cordial Siberry could go to your headn

`Teenager' is released on Sheeba Records