| | | |  | Prelusive... Sarah Blasko first began singing in the pews of a church, flanked on one side by her tone-deaf mother, and on the other by an eighty-year-old soprano unafraid to flaunt her vocal chops. Perhaps it was amongst these congregations that the...
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| Interview | Access All Areas.net.au: Firstly, Congratulations on your ARIA win. Did you expect to win Best Pop Release?
Sarah Blasko: No I didn’t. Not at all actually. I was quite surprised.
Access All Areas.net.au: Would you describe your music as pop music?
Sarah Blasko: Well yeah, I would. I write pop music. I aspire to write good pop. I wouldn’t really classify my music as Top 40 pop, but it’s still essentially pop music.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your lyrics are always very descriptive and paint a visual picture inside people’s heads. Where do you get your ideas for songs?
Sarah Blasko: They are kinda from all over the place. It’s hard to pin point really. It comes from all the things that I might read or see or watch or whatever. It comes from all kinds of places. It just comes when you’re sitting there with your guitar or piano and ideas just come to the surface. I never sit down and say, “This is precisely what the song will be about.” I know a few people who write songs like that. I just can’t do that.
Access All Areas.net.au: What do you think makes a good song?
Sarah Blasko: It’s a combination of things really. It has to have a good end to it, but it has to have a great arrangement. Most people have a tendency of over doing the arrangement, but I think you don’t have to do that. Some of the best arrangements are the most simple. There’s no need to go to town on it (laughs). A song can’t just have a good melody either. It has to have a point to it.
Access All Areas.net.au: Is there a song that you wish you had written?
Sarah Blasko: Plenty. I don’t think I listen to music and think, “I envy this song”. The Beatles had perfect pop songs. They were flawless. Some of the best songs are the unusual ones. That’s what makes it perfect is the fact that it is unique, like ‘Yesterday’. A lot of people debate over whether Lennon or McCartney was the better songwriter. I have to say that I am a fan of McCartney songs. ‘Yesterday’ had such a fantastic melody line, and the lyrics were just such great support for it.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’re playing Big Day Out early next year. What can we expect from those shows?
Sarah Blasko: Not anything different really. I’ll be playing with the same band that I’ve been playing with all year. It should be a different experience though. I’ll have to get out some of my noisier songs…not that I have many of those (laughs).
Access All Areas.net.au: Anyone that you’d love to see?
Sarah Blasko: Yes! I can’t wait to see Bjork and Arcade Fire. I think I’m more excited about seeing them, than I am about playing myself.
Access All Areas.net.au: Do you know any other artists who might be playing?
Sarah Blasko: No. I don’t know any more artists other than what has been announced. Although I did know about Bjork and Arcade Fire before they were announced, so I was felt pretty special about that (laughs).
Access All Areas.net.au: Up until the BDO, you have some time on your hands right now. What are you going to do with your free time?
Sarah Blasko: I’m going to try and write some more songs. I’m gonna take a holiday somewhere in WA and spend a week or so there. There are a few festival dates, but other then that, there is nothing.
Access All Areas.net.au: Are you looking forward to the time off?
Sarah Blasko: Yeah. I’m very enthusiastic to be able to go and write for a little while. It’s a bit difficult to finish a whole song. You’ll come up with all these ideas and stuff, but actually finishing the song is the hardest bit. I have all these half written songs, but I have to force myself to finish them. I’m excited by the initial idea, but then I leave it. It’s like my essays at Uni. I used to leave it till the last minute and it wouldn’t get closer and closer every time until I was doing them the morning that they were due.
Access All Areas.net.au: What are you currently listening to?
Sarah Blasko: I’m listening to a lot at the moment. I love the new Bat For Lashes album. Surprisingly, I’m loving the Amy Winehouse album at the moment. I think that she is a great pop artist. A lot of female artists at the moment are doing great. I’m also listening to PJ Harvey, M.I.A., Feist and Joan As Police Woman. There’s also a little bit of Wolf Parade and Arcade Fire.
Access All Areas.net.au: I was just about to ask if Bjork or Arcade Fire were getting a listen to get you excited about Big Day Out.
Sarah Blasko: Arcade Fire has, but Bjork’s new album hasn’t really caught me yet. I’m a big fan of her older, more melodic stuff. She is one of those artists that I will still buy even though I might not love it. I was actually lucky enough to see her in Madison Square Gardens when I was in New York recently. She was amazing. It’s like when an old friend gets a hair cut that you don’t like. You’re still friends with them no matter what. Artists like Wilco, Beck and Radiohead. Their music changes, but I’ll still listen to them no matter what.
Access All Areas.net.au: Thank you so much for your time today Sarah.
Sarah Blasko: My pleasure Simon.
Interview by Simon Finck
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| Biography | Prelusive...
Sarah Blasko first began singing in the pews of a church, flanked on one side by her tone-deaf mother, and on the other by an eighty-year-old soprano unafraid to flaunt her vocal chops. Perhaps it was amongst these congregations that the influence of music seeped into her subconscious. For Sarah Blasko was conceived the youngest missionary in the French-speaking paradise of Reunion Island, before her parents returned home to Sydney.
Blasko developed a musical interest without really thinking about it too much. Her mum's Olivia Newtown-John cassette was a prized a possession. In contrast, her father - an English/History Master - introduced her to the likes of Rachmaninov, Schubert, Bach and some of the less acclaimed works of Paul McCartney.
In her High School years, Blasko hid a love for music as one who leads a double life, carrying with her the impression that to make music one had to know a set of rules no more alluring than those that govern geometry.
Later in her teens, she started a band with her sister, and, as other girls were sneaking out at night to indulge in the sins of drinking and the company of boys, they began sneaking out to revel in the devilish sounds of live jazz and blues. One sacrilegious intervention, perhaps, in the eyes of her fellow parishioners, and Sarah's songbook no longer bore just hymns.
In the years that followed, Sarah and her young band found their musical feet by writing, recording and playing live. When the members went their separate ways, Blasko decided to continue as a solo artist and, eventually, set to work on her first EP, "Prelusive" - a six-track treasure of beats, guitars and vocals all homespun on a yarn that overlooked a suburban primary school.
Her next set of home recordings would form the basis of her debut album, "The Overture & the Underscore", but she would venture far from home to fully realise them.
The Overture...
Arriving in Los Angeles with her arms full, having spent the previous six months writing and recording at home, Sarah brought with her a strong sense of purpose and a barrage of demo material. From four-track tapes of endless tipsy acoustic sessions to painstakingly elaborate arrangements for mammoth synthesised orchestras.
There, she found an ally in Wally Gagel whose work with The Eels & The Folk Implosion had already shown a flair for melding the organic with the electronic. She also avoided the input of too many outsiders, with her and collaborator Robert F Cranny arranging and playing almost all of the instruments on the album, and drumming superhero Joey Waronker playing all the drums and percussion.
On what is very much an arrangement-centred record, Sarah’s voice is artfully paired with lush, atmospheric orchestrations and a palette of sounds ranging from organic to electronic; from classic and familiar to unique and purpose-designed. From the paired down suspense of its opening track to the sweeping layers of its dramatic closer, the album is a thoughtful and deliberate set of songs that form a genuinely cohesive body of work.
With minimal commercial radio play, Blasko's debut album built for her an attentive audience as much through her striking video clips and dynamic festival performances as from simple word of mouth. On the touring front, Sarah travelled her acclaimed live show across the length and breadth of her homeland. In two comprehensive national tours, Blasko and her five-piece band took her music from candlelit mountain guesthouses to overflowing festival bigtops.
Through a commitment to perform live the world over – often with a five-piece band, other times in a deconstructed duo mode – and the disarming power of the international music grapevine, Blasko also found she had fans in far away places even before the international release of "The Overture & the Underscore" in mid-2005.
Securing releases in Canada, the US, the UK and Europe, Blasko toured internationally the likes of British tunesmith Tom McRae, roots enigma Ray Lamontagneand neo-folk ingénue Martha Wainwright , before returning home to begin work on her second album.
What The Sea Wants...
Recording in mid-2006, Sarah set to task bringing to life a brand new set of songs she only began working on at the beginning of the year. In a strange twist of fate, Blasko headed straight from her performance of the Crowded House flagship number, "Don't Dream It's Over", at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, to Neil Finn's own Roundhead Studios, in Auckland, New Zealand.
Working again with loyal accomplice, Robert F Cranny, the pair brought in the talent and experience of Jim Moginie to assist with the production of the recordings. Blasko first encountered Moginie personally when collaborating with him on her version of "Flame Trees" for the Cate Blanchett film "Little Fish", although he is better known to many as a songwriter & multi-instrumentalist with legendary Australian band, Midnight Oil.
Complementing the freshness of these new compositions, Sarah took a four-piece band into the studio - a converted former ballroom - where the twelve new tracks were recorded live in the spacious and ornate surrounds by engineer Paul McKercher.
Finally, the project was mixed by Victor Van Vugt, an ex-pat Melbournian who has a long association with icons of the Australian music world, Nick Cave and Dave Graney.
Thematically, the album is an exploration of fatalism. Using the unpredictable ebbs and flows of the sea as her metaphor, Blasko looks at fate with a learned reverence, but with the maturity to set sail in spite of uncertainty, and the courage to use her own former shipwrecks as seamarks.
Sarah Blasko spent her youth in the suburbs of Sydney, in a family whose journeys of faith steered her through numerous religious denominations. Through the church, school and her Father’s oddball record collection, she was introduced to music quite accidentally, and has no formal training to speak of.
Having ventured out into the bright lights of Hollywood to record her last album, Sarah has spent two years touring the world only to find that Australia has a musical heritage as rich as anywhere else in the world.
The result is her second album, "What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have". Recorded swiftly, the album displays a more succinct, a more lucid and a more forthright Sarah Blasko. Her lyrics shoot straight and the instrumentation is clear and purposeful in its application.
Despite Blasko’s grace in the face of her humble achievements thus far, her confidence must have grown a little. She has tiptoed amongst the shadows of people like Nick Cave, Jim Moginie, Neil Finn, Paul McKercher & Victor Van Vugt – people whose contribution to music stretches back into her suburban youth. Yet Sarah has emerged into the sunlight on the other side unflinchingly still herself. |
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