In wine-tasting circles, the third sip is the telltale sip, wherein the nuances and subtleties of the wine reveal themselves. We spoke to Sarah Blasko about being more generous in her lyrics, recording in Stockholm with Björn Yttling from Peter, Bjorn and John, and what flavours to expect from her third album, As Day Follows Night. (Lead pic: Will Reichelt)

I read that there was a time in Sweden when you wondered what the heck you were doing there. Can you tell us about that?

Well, I just came all the way there on my own. I'd gone from the hottest day you can possibly imagine in Sydney and now it was minus 10. It was snowing and I was on my own. It was great that a lot of the time people would speak English, but every now and then they were joking in Swedish and I was standing there like a loser and I just thought, what the hell…!
It's really hard to get over there and really trust somebody who’s got all their buddies around them – you're just a little bit scared that you're not going to be heard. It's just a natural instinct to be confronted by that. I get Björn more now, but at that time, it's really hard to put your faith in somebody when you’ve spent a good year of your life working hard on your songs, and to put your trust in a complete stranger to understand them the correct way. So I really had to let go a bit.

I want to talk about not using electronic instruments – seems like a pretty major decision to make.

Yeah, it was something that I decided really early on. It really felt like the songs that I was writing were suited to a more natural approach and I was also just tired of electric guitars and fiddling around with sounds. I wanted something that was very tangible, something you could change the sound of, but in a more natural way – for example, with a piano, if you play it really aggressively it's got a different sound to it if you play it delicately, but it's essentially got its own character already.

My prerequisite was that all the instruments had ‘air’ in them. Piano, acoustic guitar, percussion, double bass and all that stuff. It just sounds right to me. I just couldn't be bothered with all that other stuff this time. I just wanted it to be simple.

You fell in love with a particular piano, didn’t you?

There was this whole room, and three or four big pianos, and it was like love at first sight: you look past all these other people in the room, and you see the gorgeous one in the corner, and for me it was this little piano that Björn had, literally about a quarter of the size of all the other pianos, but it just had so much personality so that was what we decided to use for the whole record.

And what about the decision to employ that most underrated of instruments, the musical saw?

We knew we wanted a string quartet, and when Björn said that the cellist played musical saw, I said, oh yes, we definitely need that. It just seemed like it'd be too good to pass up really.

Maybe it’s something to do with the film clip, but I definitely get a western soundtrack vibe on ‘All I Want’

I wasn't thinking about the Wild West but, I don't know, it just made sense. To me that song sounds more like a 1940s jazz song, but I guess that saw does evoke a desert feel or something, which suits the loneliness, the wilderness.


Sarah Blasko - 'All I Want'

I want to talk about that jazz/soul sound, because it really seems to infuse this record. Is it a reflection of what you were listening to at the time?

I was listening to all kinds of things. I was listening to modern stuff that was a bit bluesy, like M Ward, but I guess we were listening to a lot of old stuff when we were recording like Nina Simone, Alice Coltrane, Billie Holiday, all kinds of things really. And also things like Paul Simon and Talking Heads. The great thing about working with Björn is that he has a really broad taste in music and I really do as well. He’s not the kind of person that just likes what they like. Sometimes indie musicians can be a bit narrow with what they like so it was nice to work with someone who was broad-minded and liked all styles of music from all over the world.

A couple of tracks, I’m thinking particularly of ‘We Won’t Run’, almost have a Carole King anthemic quality to them, and your voice works very well with that sound. You originally thought of yourself as a singer, first and foremost, didn’t you?

I didn't actually know I wanted to do it until I was 17 or something, but yeah, I started off singing. I didn't really play an instrument – I’m still a terrible musician – and I didn't really start writing my own stuff till I was 19 or 20. I struggle to call myself a musician. I'm a singer and a writer and I've got ideas but I don't sort of feel comfortable considering myself a musician. Even though I do write it on the boarding card when i go on overseas flights.

Would you agree that your lyrics are a lot more stripped back and open on this record?

Well, that was my intention. I felt it was important to be honest and just write from the heart. I didn't want to be complicated. I just wanted to write what I felt. I suppose that's why blues and jazz seemed to appeal to me at that time, because that music is very much about that: it's quite simple-themed, it's all to a uniform structure, and they're just good classic songs. With my last record, I don't think it's the most complicated music obviously, but I think there was a sense of obscuring meaning a little bit. With this one I wanted to be really free and not try to hide behind anything, I wanted to be generous and relatable.

What was it about Björn’s work that you thought could work with your own sound?

To me it sounds like an undefinable mish-mash of different styles and things that kind of work in a fresh way. That's what really got me in. That's what I wanted to do, make a record that you felt was from another era, but not a retro record that sounds like the sixties – a record that you didn't quite know what era it was from. I could definitely hear that in the stuff that he's worked on. I also liked his string arrangements on Camera Obscura and Taken By Trees – just very simple and beautifully enhanced songs. That was a big thing for me too.

You definitely go for some new sounds on this album: what stands out is the flamenco on ‘Over & Over’, and ‘Hold On My Heart’, which sounds to me on a first listen like vaudeville…

Yes. I take that as a big compliment!

So did you feel that working with Björn allowed you to explore new musical horizons?

That's all stuff I've wanted to do for ages. I really love musical theatre and I love pop music and for me it's just putting all those things together. It was really freeing, because he didn't want to know too much about what I'd done before. We just decided to be adventurous with the music. And I knew I wanted it to have some variety and some playfulness. I think, particularly, because these songs – well, some of the songs – are a bit sad, I didn't want them to sound sad, I wanted them to sound alive.

I’m drawn to talk about ‘Sleeper Awake’, because I think it’s your longest track on record, but it’s based on a quite simple, hypnotic string melody.

I wanted that song to shift the perspective for the second half. It's about awakening and realising your own strengths, or things that you've ignored about yourself. It was both mine and Björn's favourite song to record because I think we’ve both always wanted to record a long, hypnotic song like that. Most of the instruments on the record come in and go out. It’s like you're watching a jazz band improvising. I think for me it was wonderful to do a song that was so instrumental. In the past I felt that, instrumentally, the music sometimes was a bit ‘background’, or that the instruments were too blended in with each other. On this record, I wanted you to really hear the instruments and for it to have that character.

You’ve talked a lot about comfort zones, and thriving on leaving them. Do you think it shows on the album?

Yeah I think it shows on the album. It's a very different record but I think it's important to do that. It's just so important to change yourself. And it was really important for me to work with someone who didn't want to even know my old stuff and just focus on what he was hearing, and from what I was telling him. Because who wants to keep doing the same stuff? You want to be put in a situation where you're growing, and it's really difficult because you have to swallow your pride, but it's rewarding.

Darryn King

SARAH BLASKO 'AS DAY FOLLOWS NIGHT' TOUR 2009
With Special Guest El Perro Del Mar (except WA)

Thursday, 1 October - Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, VIC
Friday, 2 October - The Forum, Melbourne
Saturday, 3 October - Norwood Concert Hall, Adelaide, SA
Friday, 9 October - The Enmore Theatre, Sydney, NSW
Saturday, 10 October - The Tivoli, Brisbane, QLD
Thursday, 12 November - The Quarry, Perth, WA

myspace.com/sarahblasko