Sarah Blasko - "I Awake"
I'm a bit late to the game on this one (Sarah Blasko's I Awake was released in October last year), but it's tricky to stay atop new Australian releases from over the ditch (excuses).
Where As Day Follows Night had equal measures darkness and light, I find I Awake submerged fully in shade. As with her 2009 release, the new album features beautiful arrangements and truly interesting instrumentation, but unlike the warmly wistful single "All I Want" or the strong and plodding "Bird On A Wire", I Awake at first appears more fragile and despairing in nature.
The album opens with the title track, "I Awake" - tribal drums and open harmonies are met with a persistent tambourine and horn stabs. It's reminiscent of big-band rockabilly. And yet it's really not: the overall sound is very unique and this can be attributed to Blasko's husky voice, I think. It seems to pull the strands together and ground it within a familiar, but still different place.
I Awake is definitely a departure from what we're used to. Songs like "Bury This" fuse middle-eastern and European sounds, supporting the narrative of the lyrics: "Come now, to a foreign land / Come now, we'll start again". Equally, the album traverses time periods - there are nods to classic periods of film scoring and theatre in "All Of Me" (those string passages and the french horn), and "Here".
We have heard similar things from Blasko, particularly "Albatross" and "Woman By The Well" (from the album What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have), yet although these are close in tone, they are far simpler, and broken up by radio-friendly songs like "Always On This Line" and "Planet New Year".
Of course it's no surprise that her style has evolved with time, and a large portion of the new album is sailing unchartered waters, but on occasion Blasko returns to form with examples like the stripped-back "An Oyster, A Pearl".
In a recent interview Blasko cites her time living in Brighton, England, as a major influence on the flavour of her music. And you can hear it - there's a certain weight, complexity and age to the music that's quite different to her earlier albums. All in all I like it, but I think I need a few more back-to-backs before I come to love it.
