free music friday: sarah blasko

Three years on from her award-winning breakthrough What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have, Australian singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko returns with her third album As Day Follows Night, a simpler yet still stylistically bold offering recorded in Sweden with producer Björn Yttling (Lykke Li, Robyn) earlier this year. The dozen songs run through various styles we’ve never heard before from Sarah, taking in jazz, vaudeville and flamenco guitar, always crisp and allowing plenty of space for Sarah’s expressive, playful voice to take command.

Released today in Australia, the album will most likely take some time in making its way across the world (officially at least), so preview track ‘No Turning Back’ will have to suffice for now. It’s perhaps a strange choice for a single as it’s not particularly radio friendly. A steady drum beat is accentuated variously by low-end piano and parps of brass, given added drama with crashing and reverberating cymbals, before it all strips back to a very simple bridge of acoustic guitar and swooping backing vocals. The repetition of the lyrics is cleverly handled as Sarah’s vocal becomes more quavery, more insistent, even desperate sounding, as the song progresses. In short, it’s a grower.

A very limited edition (1000 copies only) of As Day Follows Night featuring a bonus disc of covers of Sarah’s favourite film soundtrack songs is available for international orders if you’re quick. Each beautifully packaged boxset is signed by Sarah and also includes four “magic ink” reveal cards and paintbrushes. Painting them with water will reveal the colourful artwork. Orders to the UK can be placed here for the princely sum of AU$57.95 (including $15 postage), which equates to approximately £27.65.

Wears The Trousers has an interview with Sarah coming up as part of our Australia Week, which runs from July 20–27. We’ve also been chatting to Lenka, Lisa Mitchell, Holly Throsby, Kate Miller-Heidke, Butterfly Boucher and Howling Bells. It’s gonna be great, mate.

As Day Follows Night
01 Down On Love
02 All I Want
03 Bird On A Wire
04 Hold On My Heart
05 We Won’t Run
06 Is My Baby Yours?
07 Sleeper Awake
08 No Turning Back
09 Lost & Defeated
10 Over & Over
11 I Never Knew
12 Night & Day

Bonus disc
01 Seems Like Old Times [from 'Annie Hall']
02 Something Good [from 'The Sound Of Music']
03 Maybe This Time [from 'Cabaret']
04 Out Here On My Own [from 'Fame']
05 Xanadu [from 'Xanadu']

FREE MP3: Sarah Blasko, ‘No Turning Back’

visit Sarah on Myspace

‘No Turning Back’

‘All I Want’

Written by: Alan Pedder

Tags: as day follows night, sarah blasko

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 11:33 am and is filed under All A/V, free music friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.