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Photo credit Mclean Stephenson

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Photo – Mclean Stephenson

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Praise for SARAH BLASKO

“Blasko’s voice is one of the more extraordinary instruments to have graced a pop song this century… It’s an album that demands consumption as a complete work, building to the gentle, reconciled show-stopper ‘Divine’ – but highlights en route include ‘Goodbye!’, a Tindersticks-esque duet with Ryan Downey, and ‘I Can’t Wait Anymore’, an impeccably executed hymn to the difficulties and benefits of letting go” – UNCUT

“This is a new peak for Sarah Blasko. We’re calling it here and now – it’s one of the albums of the year. The mountain has been conquered.” – STACK

“This is her defining album so far.” – MOJO

“Blasko remains untouchable… An exquisite explosion of melodies offset by the dark vulnerability of her vocal delivery, Blasko’s seventh album offers solace to the dispirited” – Beat Magazine

“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

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Revered 3x Platinum and 3x ARIA Award-winning singer, songwriter, musician and producer SARAH BLASKO today unveils her seventh solo album I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain, together with its focus track – “the end to all endings” – ‘Goodbye!’ feat. Ryan Downey and a series of videos created by SPOD that accompany the entire album. Tracing the inevitability of painful goodbyes in all their forms and the final acceptance that follows a period of grief, 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. Stream/watch I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain HERE.

Sarah Blasko is touring nationally this November & December, with stops in QLD, NSW, VIC, SA and WA, with local support Bec Sandridge, Jack Ladder, Seja, Jacob Diamond, Queenie and Angie Colman. Tickets are on sale now from sarahblasko.com – full dates & details below.

Focus track ‘Goodbye!’ feat. Ryan Downey is a final, triumphant and loving farewell to the past and the people who prowl its alleyways, the addition of the exclamation mark to signal that while it’s a screaming goodbye, it’s also one done with good humour and love. “I wanted to write the end to all endings here,” Sarah Blasko shares, “I mean you can’t actually fully say goodbye to anyone or the past, but I was certainly going to try! As the lyrics say ‘I’m crying & waving now as I drift high above the clouds’ – It’s so sad to say goodbye but sometimes you just have to.” After the lyrics began to take form as a dialogue between two people, ‘Goodbye!’ is the only duet on I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain, the bouncing between Blasko and Ryan Downey’s vocals bringing a whole new depth and dimension, “I was so glad he said yes to being on this song, he’s so lovely and criminally underrated,” Blasko says, the two having met on her 2018’s Depth of Field tour, “I love what he brings to it, he has a voice that compliments mine but offers a very different tone – he sounds like he’s from another era.”

Following on from the technicolour dreamscapes of ‘The Way’, ‘Bothering Me’ and ‘I Can’t Wait Anymore’ music videos, today Sarah Blasko unveils an additional seven clips that accompany the remainder of the album. All of the videos across I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain were made by SPOD, who used both analogue and digital techniques to manipulate footage that Sarah Blasko filmed with photographer Wilk and lighting designer Bazz Barrett in a few fun days at the Richard Wherrett Studio on Gadigal Land in Sydney last year, pushing them into places of abstract noise and colour of analogue effects. “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 was a much more improvised, free form experimental project,” SPOD shares.

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I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain is an album of late night reflections on goodbyes, grief, new beginnings, and an important friendship that underpinned Sarah Blasko’s childhood, and finds one of Australia’s most revered songwriters more reflective and more personal than ever before. 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” – while thematically traversing both the heartbreak and quiet calm that comes with letting go of your younger self, how thin the line between tragedy and comedy becomes the older we get, and the way that time changes ourselves, our hopes and our dreams.

Across the album Sarah Blasko examines her relationship with the church and its lifelong impacts (‘The Way’), confronts dreams – both the type we have when we’re asleep and the ones we hold for our future – (‘Bothering Me’), triumphant farewells (‘Goodbye!’) and promises never to give up on her loved ones, or herself (‘Give You Up’). Elsewhere, she reaches acceptance in her journey to part with the ideas and people that no longer serve her (‘I Can’t Wait Anymore’) and pushes through to new beginnings and mindsets (‘In My Head’). Backed by unrestrained horns, she revels in all her big, dramatic and inconvenient feelings (‘Emotions’) and pays tribute to her much-loved and dearly missed friend and former tour manager, Greg Weaver, who passed away in 2019 (‘Dream Weaver’). On ‘To Be Alone’ – her most candidly autobiographical track to date – Blasko excavates the divorce she went through in her mid-20s, a split that saw her run from commitment for many years afterwards – until now, where she finds herself happily ensconced in a domestic life once again, mother to two children who help her see the world in new ways. And, finally, on ‘Divine’, Blasko clutches tight to the beauty in the small moments of the everyday. Despite roaming some big subject matter, I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain is a declaration of positivity and hope amidst the difficulty of life, one that recognises the duality in all things, and pushes forward into the light.

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.

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RELEASE WEEK EVENTS

Live performances and Q&As

Fri 1 Nov – Tempo Rubato – Naarm/Melbourne SOLD OUT
Sat 2 Nov – Jet Black Cat Music – Meanjin/Brisbane – 4pm, all-ages (free)
Sun 3 Nov – Church Street Studios – Gadigal Land/Sydney SOLD OUT

TOUR DATES

Tickets on sale now from sarahblasko.com

Fri 15 Nov – Dashville Nights – Wonnarua Land/Hunter Valley
supported by Bec Sandridge

Sat 16 Nov – Factory Theatre – Gadigal Land/Sydney SOLD OUT
supported by Bec Sandridge

Sat 17 Nov – Factory Theatre – Gadigal Land/Sydney 
supported by Jack Ladder

Sat 30 Nov – Princess Theatre – Meanjin/Brisbane
supported by Seja

Thur 5 Dec – Theatre Royal – Dja Dja Wurrung/Castlemaine SOLD OUT
supported by Jacob Diamond

Fri 6 Dec – Northcote Theatre – Naarm/Melbourne SELLING FAST
supported by Queenie

Thur 12 Dec – The Gov – Kaurna/Adelaide
supported by Queenie

Fri 13 Dec – Freo Social – Boorloo/Perth
supported by Angie Colman

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Sarah Blasko – I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain
out today (Independent)
 Stream/order

TRACK LIST

The Way
Bothering Me
Goodbye! (feat. Ryan Downey)
I Can’t Wait Anymore
Give You Up
Emotions
In My Head
Dream Weaver
To Be Alone
Divine

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

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AMNPLIFY – DB