Sarah's Splendourous adventure

Wed 20th Jun, 2007 in Features

With the highly anticipated Splendour in the Grass Festival quickly approaching, FasterLouder had the pleasure to chat with one of the Festival’s premier artists, Sarah Blasko. August 4th will be Sarah’s third appearance at ‘Splendour in the Grass,’ one that she is looking forward to. “It’s a nice festival, Splendour, it’s not too big and it’s in a beautiful spot,” she remarks.

After the four ARIA nominations and the huge success of her debut album The Overture and the Underscore released in 2004, the Indie-pop singer released her newest album What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have in October of 2006. Now with two successful albums under her belt, Sarah still believes her music is at its budding stages and she has “places to go from here”. “I think there’s more in there that I really haven’t started to work out. I would say I am at an early point.” Her soft, delicate yet confident voice explains that her music is constantly evolving, and that the journey has just begun. “I am trying to work out how it should sound, myself. But, you know, it is one of those things that is evolving and changing as you listen to more music that is not your own.”

Sarah expressed her gratitude for the praise she has received, but also emphasised the importance of accomplishing her personal goals. “You can get a certain amount of praise from other people but I guess you are really just trying to fulfil your own ideals and your own sense of where you should be. I guess it’s for me sort of trying to get to that place.”

There’s a lot to Sarah, just like there is a lot to her music. As real as the evolution her music is undergoing, is her beautiful voice and her lyrics. Sarah’s elegant sensibility allows her to give to the audience just what she would expect from them: honesty. “You hope that in what you are doing you are trying to be honest about something. I guess that is probably where I am trying to get with my music – not having affectations just trying to capture something that is kind of honest.” Simply put, her music is refreshingly genuine, with a gracefully intelligent poetic flow. She clarifies, “and in saying that I don’t mean it has to be really heart on your sleeve or really obvious about what you are talking about. I just mean that I think people can get a sense when something is being honest.”

Her newest album, What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have, is just that, as her meaning is sincere but slightly veiled, by the swirling waves of oceanic themes. The nautical theme in this album, she says, “wasn’t something that I planned. It just seemed to be a recurring metaphor. I suppose that choosing the artwork and the way everything was presented all kind of just tied in with some of those recurring themes.” Blasko says the ocean metaphor evolved during the production of the album, after seeing the big picture of her work. “Sometimes it’s interesting to look at the whole set of songs together and realise the connections between them. And how recurring problems that you are trying to work out and exploring from different angles, often point to the same things or ideas.”

But Sarah’s love of music and singing wasn’t her dream all along. “I didn’t really start thinking it was something I loved doing, well, I kind of just started with enjoying singing and music. But when I was about 18 and 19, I started writing really terrible songs, and I enjoyed it.” She laughs. “And then I wanted to be better.”

With a university education in English literature and film, Blasko considered a journalism career, after her childhood dream of becoming a veterinarian, she says, subsided along with her math and science grades. She explains, however, that “it wasn’t really something I felt as strongly about as music. There’s been something that’s kept driving this interest in writing songs, that I haven’t really felt about anything else that I have done. So my voice kind of took prominence.”

Live performances, such as Splendour in the Grass, have always been a passion of Sarah’s. Before the recording her two albums, playing live was a big part of Sarah’s musical career. She laughs that she “developed a real love for that [playing live] I guess before I kind of got a bit obsessed for a while there with recording stuff.” The artist hinted at a rush of pressure and excitement during performances as well as the interesting performer-viewer dynamic. “Yeah but it’s a wonderful thing to do. It has got that kind of immediateness to it and you never can quite predict how people respond and the mood in the air, kind of somehow affects the performance.”

As for her third appearance at the ‘Splendor in the Grass Festival,’ Sarah is excited to present something a little different in 2007. “Recently I have been doing some shows with a string section…This is going to be more of the band line up. There’s five of us and there’s guitars and keyboards and we will try and make it as rock and roll as we can” she laughs.

Blasko and the gang are set for a later performance than usual this year, giving Blasko a different experience she is looking forward to. “Well it will be rainy and muddy, that’s one,” she laughs, adding another twist to the show. Overall, the performance at ‘Splendour in the Grass’ should be a splendour at least. As for Sarah, she is simply continuing to do what she genuinely advises other young artists to do: “just continuing to do things yourself and kind of have your own vision for what you are doing is really the most important thing.”