Sarah Blasko

Fri 22nd Jan, 2010 in Features

I tell Sarah Blasko that I once stopped in my tracks when I saw her sauntering down King Street in Sydney. In case you haven’t had the chance to catch a live performance, or one of her Saturday strolls through Newtown, she’s rather tall. With our conversation punctuated by her uncertain “I don’t know”s and very Australian “nah”s, she’s not nearly as intimidating down the phone-line.

“Not really. Sometimes I wish they would, especially when it’s a busy street,” says Sarah when I ask if there is usually a parting of the pedestrian sea when the renowned Australian female soloist is around. “I do notice it though, when people notice me.”

Blasko is of course about to perform at the Sydney Festival’s Rouge’s Gallery and across the country for St Jerome’s Laneway Festival. “I’m really excited to be doing it,” says Blasko of Rouge’s Gallery. “There’s a lot of amazing people playing and even the location is just going to be really beautiful.”

The songstress agrees that it will probably be a performance location highlight for her career. “Um, playing at the, I think it was at the MCG or something, for the Commonwealth Games, that was probably the most surreal thing I’ve ever done.”

Blasko also says the performances are a nice distraction from her next move – London. “It’s good to feel like there’s so many great things to look forward to,” says Blasko of the next three weeks before she moves her life to the UK. “I feel really fortunate, to be honest. I feel really good about it.”

30-something and Sydney born, Blasko says the decision to explore opportunities in Europe is about timing and the influence of her sojourn in Sweden to record her latest album, As Day Follows Night. Produced by Bjorn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John fame, Blasko says the experience was an eye-opener.

“You don’t see it in such local kind of terms,” says Blasko of her music post-Sweden. “You think of things in more of like universal themes and ideas. I found it really loosened me up and broadened my mind to certain ideas about making music.”

Blasko says the idea to look outside of Australia for an audience is relatively new and that it has a lot to do with being comfortable with her latest musical offering, and the maturity she believes she has found.

“In the past, I don’t think it’s been so important for me,” says Blasko of a world-conquering musical career (and that’s not really her style, is it?). “I do think there will be a certain sense of regret if I don’t give it a chance and see what can happen though.”

The plan is to make a base in London for eight months when As Day Follows Night is released in the UK, France and Germany, with the rest of the continent possibly to follow. “I guess, I’m just really gonna try my best and see what happens,” says Blasko earnestly, with her trademark tiny, soft voice.

As Day Follows Night may have garnered the young star with accolades and awards, but Blasko says it almost wasn’t a reality, until she found confidence in it.

“I almost didn’t want to record it because it was probably more honest than the other records. There was a certain disguise to things in the other records that I don’t think this one had,” says Blasko of her recent ARIA Award-nominated album. Its predecessors What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have and Overture and Underscore were both highly-acclaimed albums, but the general consensus is that Blasko has hit her stride now.

Blasko’s work has always had an emotional core. I tell Sarah that one of her songs was a ‘break-up’ song for me. “Which one did you say? Oh, really? Okay,” she lets out another chuckle.

“I started to look at it in a very different way and realised that some of my favourite songs are some of those that dare to be very honest and close to the bone,” continues Blasko of her hesitance in releasing As Day Follows Night. “I just thought, well, that’s just denying a pretty major part of musical history to think that songs need to be disguised in that way, you know? And so once I found encouragement in that, I thought, well, it’s important to be brave with that stuff and go for it. I think when you have some kind of instinct within you that it’s something important for you to do, you can’t really deny it. So any fear that you have somehow subsides.”

Apart from her pleasant demeanour and dress-sense (I have friends who used to walk out of stores with long vintage dresses, calling them “very Blasko”), she agrees that her dancing style is also another rather nice trademark – although she doesn’t like to think about.

“It just seems to make sense to me,” says Sarah of her, what I would call, mesmerising robotic stage presence. “When people say things about dancing and that, I’m a bit embarrassed some times. Because I just suddenly think, – œOh, okay…’ It just, kind of, suddenly dawns on me what people are seeing and for me it just makes sense to move like that because of the music,” says Sarah unapologetically.

Before we finish, I tell Sarah there was a point where the line dropped out and if she had said anything that we all might want to hear. “Oh, nah,” she says in her remarkably intact Australian twang. “I think I just laughed awkwardly.”

Sarah Blasko plays the St Jerome’s Laneway Festival around the country this summer. Find out when she’s playing in your city here.