1
 
Sarah Blasko — Depth Of Field (Feb 23, 2018)

Sarah Blasko — Depth Of Field (Feb 23, 2018)

               Sarah Blasko — Depth Of Field (Feb 23, 2018)  Sarah Blasko — Depth Of Field (Feb 23, 2018)•★•      One of Australian music’s brightest stars, Sarah Blasko, has announced her new album ‘Depth Of Field’ will land in February.
•••      The campaign for the new LP, her sixth, officially kicks off today with the release of album opener and first single ‘Phantom’.
•••      “I asked my dad (a history & English teacher) to record himself reading poetry for inspiration,” Sarah explains. “He quoted a line from Nietzsche which contained the word ‘Phantom’. This song is about the role that influential people play in your life, forming who you are. I feel I carry them with me. Their presence is so tangible even when they’re not there. Like a phantom limb.”
•••      And ‘Phantom’ comes with its own music video, which you can check out below.
•••      ‘Depth Of Field’, meantime, will be released digitally, on CD and on a special limited edition lenticular cover vinyl on Friday February 23. Fotka uživatele Ben Tais Amundssen.Birth name: Sarah Elizabeth Blaskow
Born: 23 September 1976
Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia ~ Réunion
Instruments: Vocals, piano, keyboards, organ, vibraphone, guitar, acoustic guitar
Album release: Feb 23, 2018
Record Label: EMI
Duration:      41:16
Tracks:
01. Phantom     4:29
02. A Shot     4:21
03. Never Let Me Go     3:44
04. Everybody Wants To Sin     3:50
05. Heaven Sent     4:10
06. Making It Up     4:30
07. Savour It     4:03
08. Another     3:32
09. Read My Mind     4:24
10. Leads Me Back     4:13
℗ 2018 Sarah Blasko under exclusive license to Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd.
Review
Sarah Blasko: Depth of Field review — sublime vulnerability with a dark undercurrent. Score: *****    
•★•      Australian artist’s impressive sixth album is an intimate exploration of desirehaunted by a sense of deep disquiet.
Everett True, Thu 15 Feb 2018 17.00 GMT
•★•      Is Sarah Blasko going through deep trauma, or a massive break~up? Many of the songs on her new album, Depth of Field, seem to indicate so.
•★•      In some places they call to mind Donna Summer; in others they are reminiscent of Sophie Ellis~Bextor’s troubling (and sublime) Murder on the Dancefloor. Her music is shot through with desire, a longing that goes beyond the usual template of imagined and sometimes real slights. Calling a song Never Let Me Go may well not be the most original idea around, but Blasko invests the phrase with a degree of vulnerability and hope that goes far beyond the norm.
•★•      The songs on Blasko’s sixth album feel possessed of a dark undercurrent, the sort of edge that comes around after you have spent one too many late~night hours waiting for your partner to return home from carousing. You can visualise the mirror ball throwing cascade confusion during the opening song, Phantom, but the lyrics refer to something darker yet, a “phantom heartbeat”.
•★•      Is Blasko singing about an imaginary child? A never~born? Her poise and her voice are immaculate — crystalline, enticing — but the music and sentiments seem deeply troubled. Blasko herself claims the song concerns other matters entirely.
•★•      “I asked my dad [a history and English teacher] to record himself reading poetry for inspiration,” she says. “He quoted a line from Nietzsche which contained the word ‘phantom’. This song is about the role that influential people play in your life, forming who you are. I feel I carry them with me. Their presence is so tangible even when they’re not there, like a phantom limb.”
•★•      A phantom limb: this is what Depth of Field feels to me right now. Songs like the swirling Heaven Sent and beckoning intimacy of Read My Mind race around my head like a real friend, or a forbidden lover. I have carried this album almost everywhere with me for weeks now. Whether it is playing through my headphones or not, Blasko’s cajoling, sensational voice soundtracks the inner sadness and mundane reality of the 10.09 train to Guildford. Another half~hour delay? Another chance to listen to Blasko.
•★•      Reviewing this Australian songwriter’s Aria~award~winning fifth album, 2015’s Eternal Return, I made reference to Olivia Newton~John. In particular, I feel that both singers have the ability to perform broken hearts that can help shatter and mend real ones, too. I wrote: “Her songwriting craft is so advanced, her grasp of pop so redolent, it is sometimes easy to forget how great a singer Blasko is.”
•★•      I stand by those sentiments for Blasko’s sixth, recorded on the cusp of an international breakthrough, surely. The brace of betrayal songs — A Shot and Never Let Me Go — stalk these lonely streets with menace and unrequited desire in their hearts — brutal and honest and suffused with melancholia. These are as great as any Australian pop I have heard, from Kylie Minogue to The Easybeats. Similarly, 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.
•★•      Every now and then, Blasko wanders into glam~stomp diva territory. And of course she owns it. The deliciously naughty (not fragile at all) Everybody Wants to Sin is Goldfrapp without the high heels, a shiver of delight to seduce the dancefloor. Every dancefloor. Everywhere. •★•      https://www.theguardian.com/
About
•★•      Australian songwriter Sarah Blasko arrived in the U.S. in 2005 with a pedigree that couldn’t be ignored. Trailing a list of ARIA Award nominations in the categories of Best Album, Best Female Artist, Best Breakthrough Artist, and Best Pop Release, she distinguished herself with an ethereal, lovelorn delivery alongside graceful arrangements and an overall somber, inward~looking disposition.
•★•      Raised by missionary parents, Blasko sang her first songs in church alongside her tone~deaf mother, but the influences that came across more readily in her music derived from the ‘80s radio and television she heard as a child: Prince, David Bowie, and Eurythmics. Those popular acts, combined with the composers her professor father introduced her to — Rachmaninov, Schubert, and Bach — formed a pleasing musical jumble she would later pick apart and repackage into digestible, brainy pop. In high school, Blasko led a jazz and blues~influenced band with her sister. That band soon dissolved and other groups would follow, but within the space of a few years Blasko was determinedly a solo act.
•★•      An introductory EP, the six~song Prelusive, arrived in 2004 and was routinely referred to as “homespun.” But its promise propelled Blasko, who returned later that year with the full~length The Overture & the Underscore. After racking up fans in Australia, she made her way to Hollywood. Following the album’s 2005 release in America, Blasko embarked on tours with the likes of Ray LaMontagne and Martha Wainwright. Her second full~length album, What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have, was released in Australia in 2006, debuting at number seven on the ARIA chart. Two years later, she decamped to Sweden and began working with Björn Yttling, who produced 2009’s As Day Follows Night. It climbed to number five in Australia and was repackaged with the 15~track Live at the Forum a year later.
•★•      Blasko returned in 2012 with another Top Ten album, I Awake, which saw her backed by the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra. Recorded in 2013, I Awake: Live at Sydney Opera House followed in 2014. Blasko’s fifth studio album, Eternal Return, arrived in late 2015. Her fourth straight Top Ten solo LP, it peaked at number six. The making of her sixth LP was documented for Blasko, an hourlong film that aired on Australia’s ABC in November of 2017. The resulting album, Depth of Field, followed in early 2018. ~ Tammy La Gorce & Marcy Donelson
Website: http://www.sarahblasko.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahblasko
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahblaskomusic
Personal style:
¶      Blasko is known for her vintage tastes in clothes, music and art, and she revealed in a Rolling Stone (Australia) interview: “I like things that are old and have been lived in. It probably started as a kid when my family shopped at Vinnie’s because we hardly had any money. I like things that stand the test of time.”
Awards:
¶      Blasko has won two Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Music Awards from 14 nominations.
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)
••     The Overture and The Underscore (2004)
••     Seeker, Lover, Keeper (with Sally Seltmann and Holly Throsby) (2011)
AWARDS:
••     3 X ARIA awards — Best Pop, Best Female & Best Adult Alternative
••     Album Of The Year — JJJ — As Day Follows Night
••••••_________________________________________________••••••

Sarah Blasko — Depth Of Field (Feb 23, 2018)

ALBUM COVERS XI.