Sarah Blasko (born September 23, 1976) is an ARIA Award winning Australian musician.
She was born in Sydney soon after her family returned from French-speaking Reunion where her parents had been missionaries.
An original and largely self-reliant musical artist, Blasko is known for her writing and production skills, as well as her unique voice and stage presence.
Blasko was first heard in the mid-1990s fronting Sydney band, Acquiesce, after an initial tour of France with founding members Dave Hemmings, Paul Camilleri, and her sister Kate Halcrow. With material written by Blasko and Camilleri, they recorded a single and an EP with producer Hugh Wilson, receiving some local attention.
In 2002, Sarah decided to go solo. Material for the Prelusive EP - a result of initial explorative collaborations with Wilson but fully realised with Nick Schneider and Steve Francis - was originally recorded as demos.
Howe'ver, after becoming disillusioned with the indecisiveness and lack of solid commitment from the labels she met with, Blasko decided to release and promote the material independently. With the financial assistance of then-manager Craig New, she also produced a music video for the leading track, "Your Way".
The track was picked up by local community stations such as 2SER, as well as the national youth broadcaster, Triple J - who also gave light rotation to two other EP tracks, "Will You Ever Know"& "Be Tonight". "Your Way"was also featured on the test loop of fledgling Sydney community radio station 2FBi, when the station began to broadcast full-time.
After this initial success, Sarah was approached by and eventually signed to Brisbane-based label, Dew Process, who repackaged and re-released the EP. There are minor variations to the packaging of the major label release, which make the independent release slightly more valuable to collectors.
In late 2004, Blasko released her debut album, The Overture & the Underscore, recorded in Hollywood at the studio of engineer Wally Gagel. She co-produced the album with Gagel and fellow songwriter, Robert F Cranny.
Gagel engineered and mixed the album, with some assistance from Bruce MacFarlane. Drummer Joey Waronker - a world-class studio drummer and one-time live performer with Beck & REM - played all of the drums and percussion on the album, being the only genuine musical contributor to the album outside of the two writers.
The album was met with critical acclaim and received gold accreditation in Australia, despite limited commercial radio play. In 2005 Blasko was rewarded for her work with four ARIA nominations. Of particular note was her nomination for Album of the Year.
Three music videos were produced for album tracks "Dont U Eva", "Always Worth It"& "Perfect Now."The video for "Always Worth It"shows Blasko laying, unharmed, on the bottom of an inverted car before exiting and joyfully skipping against the stream of people heading towards the site of the wrecked vehicle. The track, "Always Worth It"featured in the final episode of US television series, Six Feet Under.
With her debut EP & album focussed around acoustic guitar and utilising both live and programmed drums, Sarahs early recordings possessed much appeal for fans of indietronica, and in particular the more singer-songwriter type artists who aspire to this kind of production. Howe'ver, in contrast, Blaskos compositions venture toward grand rather than diminutive melodies and to soaring pop arrangements rather than lo-fi underplaying.
This distinction was observed by Bernard Zuel in The Sydney Morning Herald:
Blasko works in the territory where Ed Harcourt and Fiona Apple shine, taking some of the new acoustic framework (think Turin Brakes) and some of the folk-meets-electronica stuff that came out in the post-Portishead years and applies them to straightforward pop songs.
Further to this, her live interpretations of the same material display a harder edge, and a greater dynamic range than the recordings. Drummer Jeff De Araujo often applies an additional layer of broken beats and percussion to the sampled drum loops; the presence of electric guitars is more pronounced; and Sarah is known to deliver her vocals with increased rawness and energy.
Bret Gladstone, for the Associated Press, wrote of the album:
The Overture and the Underscore finds the 28-year-old Aussie delivering a carefully crafted collection of compositions - torn between reverence of love and weariness of a reality that obliterates it - that will satisfy anyone who has felt that Norah Jones, Radiohead and Coldplay would serve well as composite musical DNA. Steering away from swanky vocal effects like double-tracking, and, for the most part, harmonies, producer Wally Gagel hones [sic] in on the breathy, weathered velvet of Blaskos voice, valuing the authenticity of its imperfections as well as its soul-weary grace, while framing it within wide-screen sonic atmosphere's at once funereal and emboldened.
In the period following the release of her debut album, Blasko demonstrated her enthusiasm and flair for interpreting the songs of others.
With Robert F. Cranny, she produced a cover version of signature Crowded House number, "Dont Dream Its Over", which featured on the tribute album, She Will Have Her Way: The Songs Of Neil & Tim Finn. The track was engineered by David Trump at Big Jesus Burger studios in Sydney, and mixed by David Hemmings. In 2006, Sarah performed this song live at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
The pair have also laid claim to a fragile, stripped-back version of Underground Lovers classic "Losin It". Performed with voice and acoustic guitar, the song has become a favourite in their live set, and has led to a collaboration between Blasko and the songs co-writer, Glenn Bennie, for his second album with project, GB3.
Sarah also appears on a cover of the classic Cold Chisel song, "Flame Trees", which was on the soundtrack to the Rowan Woods film, Little Fish, and featured on the 2007 Cold Chisel tribute album Standing on the Outside. This track was produced by two highly respected Australian musicians, Wayne Connolly, who has worked with iconic Australian bands such as Underground Lovers, You Am I, The Vines and more recently Youth Group, and Jim Moginie, a key member of legendary band, Midnight Oil.
Sarah has also performed a cover of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"by Elton John, which appears on the ABC Records release, Triple J: Like A Version - Vol 2. She also performed the New Buffalo track, "Come Back", when that artist was forced to cancel a number of support slots in February 2005.
Touring
Sarah Blasko has toured extensively in Australia, as well as the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland. Although the exact configuration varies, Sarah performs with a five or six piece band usually consisting of drums, electric and synth bass, acoustic and electric guitar plus keyboards and various samplers/effects units. Due to the breadth of arrangement most of the touring musicians are multi-instrumentalists.
Sarah also performs in a duo with only Cranny accompanying on guitar and keyboards. In both formats, Sarah plays acoustic guitar and occasional keyboards.
This versatility allowed her to tour with folk/roots artists such as Ray LaMontagne, as well as play outdoor rock festivals such as Australias famous Big Day Out.
Sarah has toured the UK and Ireland with Tom McRae, and the US and Canada with Ray LaMontagne, James Blunt and Martha Wainwright. Sarah has played at Woodford Folk Festival, The Falls Festival, Homebake, Splendour in the Grass, the Festival of the Sun, the WOMADelaide festival and in 2006 joined the national Big Day Out tour.
In March 2007 Sarah Blasko performed a special concert in Perth, Western Australia in the Octagon Theatre of the University of Western Australia. It lasted 2 hours with Blasko supported by a string quartet and a local guitarist. During the show she performed a duet with Joe McKee, frontman of local rock band Snowman.
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 mums 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 Sarahs 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, Sarahs 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, Blaskos 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 Lamontagne and neo-folk ingenue 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, "Dont Dream Its Over", at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, to Neil Finns 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 Fathers 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 Blaskos 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.
Sarah Blasko (born September 23, 1976) is an ARIA Award winning Australian musician.
She was born in Sydney soon after her family returned from French-speaking Reunion where her parents had been missionaries.
An original and largely self-reliant musical artist, Blasko is known for her writing and production skills, as well as her unique voice and stage presence.
Blasko was first heard in the mid-1990s fronting Sydney band, Acquiesce, after an initial tour of France with founding members Dave Hemmings, Paul Camilleri, and her sister Kate Halcrow. With material written by Blasko and Camilleri, they recorded a single and an EP with producer Hugh Wilson, receiving some local attention.
In 2002, Sarah decided to go solo. Material for the Prelusive EP - a result of initial explorative collaborations with Wilson but fully realised with Nick Schneider and Steve Francis - was originally recorded as demos.
Howe'ver, after becoming disillusioned with the indecisiveness and lack of solid commitment from the labels she met with, Blasko decided to release and promote the material independently. With the financial assistance of then-manager Craig New, she also produced a music video for the leading track, "Your Way".
The track was picked up by local community stations such as 2SER, as well as the national youth broadcaster, Triple J - who also gave light rotation to two other EP tracks, "Will You Ever Know"& "Be Tonight". "Your Way"was also featured on the test loop of fledgling Sydney community radio station 2FBi, when the station began to broadcast full-time.
After this initial success, Sarah was approached by and eventually signed to Brisbane-based label, Dew Process, who repackaged and re-released the EP. There are minor variations to the packaging of the major label release, which make the independent release slightly more valuable to collectors.
In late 2004, Blasko released her debut album, The Overture & the Underscore, recorded in Hollywood at the studio of engineer Wally Gagel. She co-produced the album with Gagel and fellow songwriter, Robert F Cranny.
Gagel engineered and mixed the album, with some assistance from Bruce MacFarlane. Drummer Joey Waronker - a world-class studio drummer and one-time live performer with Beck & REM - played all of the drums and percussion on the album, being the only genuine musical contributor to the album outside of the two writers.
The album was met with critical acclaim and received gold accreditation in Australia, despite limited commercial radio play. In 2005 Blasko was rewarded for her work with four ARIA nominations. Of particular note was her nomination for Album of the Year.
Three music videos were produced for album tracks "Dont U Eva", "Always Worth It"& "Perfect Now."The video for "Always Worth It"shows Blasko laying, unharmed, on the bottom of an inverted car before exiting and joyfully skipping against the stream of people heading towards the site of the wrecked vehicle. The track, "Always Worth It"featured in the final episode of US television series, Six Feet Under.
With her debut EP & album focussed around acoustic guitar and utilising both live and programmed drums, Sarahs early recordings possessed much appeal for fans of indietronica, and in particular the more singer-songwriter type artists who aspire to this kind of production. Howe'ver, in contrast, Blaskos compositions venture toward grand rather than diminutive melodies and to soaring pop arrangements rather than lo-fi underplaying.
This distinction was observed by Bernard Zuel in The Sydney Morning Herald:
Blasko works in the territory where Ed Harcourt and Fiona Apple shine, taking some of the new acoustic framework (think Turin Brakes) and some of the folk-meets-electronica stuff that came out in the post-Portishead years and applies them to straightforward pop songs.
Further to this, her live interpretations of the same material display a harder edge, and a greater dynamic range than the recordings. Drummer Jeff De Araujo often applies an additional layer of broken beats and percussion to the sampled drum loops; the presence of electric guitars is more pronounced; and Sarah is known to deliver her vocals with increased rawness and energy.
Bret Gladstone, for the Associated Press, wrote of the album:
The Overture and the Underscore finds the 28-year-old Aussie delivering a carefully crafted collection of compositions - torn between reverence of love and weariness of a reality that obliterates it - that will satisfy anyone who has felt that Norah Jones, Radiohead and Coldplay would serve well as composite musical DNA. Steering away from swanky vocal effects like double-tracking, and, for the most part, harmonies, producer Wally Gagel hones [sic] in on the breathy, weathered velvet of Blaskos voice, valuing the authenticity of its imperfections as well as its soul-weary grace, while framing it within wide-screen sonic atmosphere's at once funereal and emboldened.
In the period following the release of her debut album, Blasko demonstrated her enthusiasm and flair for interpreting the songs of others.
With Robert F. Cranny, she produced a cover version of signature Crowded House number, "Dont Dream Its Over", which featured on the tribute album, She Will Have Her Way: The Songs Of Neil & Tim Finn. The track was engineered by David Trump at Big Jesus Burger studios in Sydney, and mixed by David Hemmings. In 2006, Sarah performed this song live at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
The pair have also laid claim to a fragile, stripped-back version of Underground Lovers classic "Losin It". Performed with voice and acoustic guitar, the song has become a favourite in their live set, and has led to a collaboration between Blasko and the songs co-writer, Glenn Bennie, for his second album with project, GB3.
Sarah also appears on a cover of the classic Cold Chisel song, "Flame Trees", which was on the soundtrack to the Rowan Woods film, Little Fish, and featured on the 2007 Cold Chisel tribute album Standing on the Outside. This track was produced by two highly respected Australian musicians, Wayne Connolly, who has worked with iconic Australian bands such as Underground Lovers, You Am I, The Vines and more recently Youth Group, and Jim Moginie, a key member of legendary band, Midnight Oil.
Sarah has also performed a cover of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"by Elton John, which appears on the ABC Records release, Triple J: Like A Version - Vol 2. She also performed the New Buffalo track, "Come Back", when that artist was forced to cancel a number of support slots in February 2005.
Touring
Sarah Blasko has toured extensively in Australia, as well as the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland. Although the exact configuration varies, Sarah performs with a five or six piece band usually consisting of drums, electric and synth bass, acoustic and electric guitar plus keyboards and various samplers/effects units. Due to the breadth of arrangement most of the touring musicians are multi-instrumentalists.
Sarah also performs in a duo with only Cranny accompanying on guitar and keyboards. In both formats, Sarah plays acoustic guitar and occasional keyboards.
This versatility allowed her to tour with folk/roots artists such as Ray LaMontagne, as well as play outdoor rock festivals such as Australias famous Big Day Out.
Sarah has toured the UK and Ireland with Tom McRae, and the US and Canada with Ray LaMontagne, James Blunt and Martha Wainwright. Sarah has played at Woodford Folk Festival, The Falls Festival, Homebake, Splendour in the Grass, the Festival of the Sun, the WOMADelaide festival and in 2006 joined the national Big Day Out tour.
In March 2007 Sarah Blasko performed a special concert in Perth, Western Australia in the Octagon Theatre of the University of Western Australia. It lasted 2 hours with Blasko supported by a string quartet and a local guitarist. During the show she performed a duet with Joe McKee, frontman of local rock band Snowman.
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 mums 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 Sarahs 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, Sarahs 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, Blaskos 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 Lamontagne and neo-folk ingenue 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, "Dont Dream Its Over", at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, to Neil Finns 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 Fathers 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 Blaskos 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.
