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Photo credit McLean Stephenson

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Praise for SARAH BLASKO

“brutal and honest and suffused with melancholia… Blasko’s music often feels like it follows the lineage of mod and the core values of that style: aspirational, inspirational, forward looking, tightly wound, late-night fuelled.” – The Guardian

“[Blasko] has forged a unique sound, with lyrics enigmatic yet relatable, melodies rewarding of repeat listens, all delivered with a vocal style of no-nonsense, pitch-perfect power that lends the songs a timeless air.” – Australian Financial Review

“I find it hard to believe there was once a time when Sarah Blasko didn’t exist in our collective musical consciousness. These songs have a permanence, an enduring quality that makes me feel I’ve known them forever.” – FBi Radio

“Nobody does inner restlessness like Blasko… lyrics oblique yet bursting with feeling, melodies that insinuate rather than ingratiate, a voice that marries booming power with spot-on pitch” – Sydney Morning Herald

“The songs have such a personal resonance that you won’t know whether to share their beauty with everyone you know or to keep them as your little secret.” – The AU Review

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Revered 3x Platinum and 3x ARIA Award-winning singer, songwriter, musician and producer SARAH BLASKO today unveils the tracklist for her first full-length studio album in six years I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain (out Nov 1), announces her national album tour this November/December and shares the new single + video ‘Bothering Me’. Tracing the inevitability of painful goodbyes in many forms, and the grief – and acceptance – that follows, I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain sees Sarah Blasko firmly in the present as she searches for the light that comes with new beginnings. ‘Bothering Me’ is out everywhere now – stream/watch HERE – and pre-order I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain HERE.

Tickets to Sarah Blasko’s album tour, on which she’ll perform songs from I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain and her extensive back catalogue across Qld, NSW, SA and WA – in addition to the already announced VIC shows – backed by her live band are on sale 9am local this Thursday 29 August.

On the howling new single ‘Bothering Me’, Sarah Blasko confronts dreams – both the kind we have when we’re asleep and the ones we hold for our future – as she is revisited by her past at night and how her life is not aligned with what her younger self once foresaw. These small but powerful reckonings cut a lot deeper than the track’s title suggests. “Dreams seem to be a way of processing things that happen during the day and so I embraced dreaming as a way of getting over things,” Blasko explains, “Getting older is TOUGH. Sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore and that I’ve lost touch with the person I used to be and the dreams I held. I try to let go but not let go at the same time because dreams are important.”

The ‘Bothering Me’ video captures Sarah Blasko in technicolour as she makes moves through kaleidoscopic scenes; it was created by SPOD, who also edited and provided visual effects, with filming by Wilk and lighting design by Bazz Barrett. On the video, Sarah Blasko shares, “All the video material for the record was created when three people – a lighting person (Bazz Barrett), a videographer (Wilk) and a singer with an album (me) – spent three days in a very nice rehearsal room, not really knowing what we’d come out with or what it would all mean. We played around and laughed a lot, and in the end were proud of the spirit of what we captured.” Spod adds, “Getting this project from Sarah was intriguing as usually I’d be involved from the beginning with a defined idea of what I’m aiming to do, but this is a much more improvised, free form experimental project where I was delivered footage and given free reign. I didn’t want to take it too far but wanted to heighten the momentum and emotion of the song, so I pushed the footage into the abstract noise and colour of analog effects.”

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Together with the album’s first single ‘The Way’, ‘Bothering Me’ sets the scene for I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain as an album of late night reflections on goodbyes, grief, new beginnings and an important friendship that underpinned her childhood. It was recorded at Rancom Street Studios in Eora/Sydney with engineer Brent Clark, produced by Sarah Blasko and mixed by Kenny Gilmore (Weyes Blood, Julia Holter, Ariel Pink), and marked a new approach to writing and recording from that of her earlier records: “This album was probably the most relaxed and free feeling record I’ve made,” Sarah Blasko shares.

Sarah Blasko is as expansive as she is prolific, writing songs that strike with rare immediacy, clarity and purpose. Across a discography of six solo albums – Depth of Field (2018), Eternal Return (2015), I Awake (2012), As Day Follows Night (2009), What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have (2006) and The Overture & the Underscore (2004) – and two albums with Holly Throsby and Sally Seltmann as Seeker Lover Keeper – Seeker, Lover, Keeper (2011) and Wild Seeds (2019) – four albums have reached Platinum Sales Status with six debuts in the ARIA Top 10. Sarah Blasko is a three-time ARIA Award winner, 18x ARIA Award nominee, has won the J Award for Australian Album of the Year, and three-times shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize. Her cover of Cold Chisel’s ‘Flame Trees’ (2004) had a resurgence when it was featured in Season 2 of Netflix’s Heartbreak High, spawning a remix by Cub Sport released this June. Sarah Blasko composed the music for Bell Shakespeare’s productions of Twelfth Night (2023) and Hamlet (2008), Sydney Dance Company’s Emergence (2013), has been praised by the likes of Sir Elton John on his visit to James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke and recently wrapped a national tour with Boy & Bear, where she debuted songs from I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain live for the first time.

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TOUR DATES

Tickets on sale 9am (local) Thursday 29 August from sarahblasko.com

Fri 15 Nov – Dashville Nights – Wonnarua Land/Hunter Valley
Sat 16 Nov – Factory Theatre – Gadigal Land/Sydney
Sat 30 Nov – Princess Theatre – Meanjin/Brisbane
Thur 5 Dec – Theatre Royal – Dja Dja Wurrung/Castlemaine
Fri 6 Dec – Northcote Theatre – Naarm/Melbourne
Thur 12 Dec – The Gov – Kaurna/Adelaide
Fri 13 Dec – Freo Social – Boorloo/Perth

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Follow SARAH BLASKO
Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – TikTok
Bandcamp – Spotify – YouTube
Apple Music – sarahblasko.com

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Photo credit McLean Stephenson

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AMNPLIFY – DB