Sarah Blasko Announces New album ‘I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain’ & First Single ‘The Way’
Prolific 4x Platinum and 3x ARIA Award-winning singer, songwriter, musician and producer SARAH BLASKO announces her first full-length studio album in six years I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain (Nov 1) and releases the heartbreaker album opener The Way together with its music video. Tracing the inevitability of painful goodbyes in many forms, and the grief – and acceptance – that follows, 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. I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain is released November 1, 2024 – pre-order HERE.
Opening with just piano and voice that glides effortlessly between registers before backing vocals reminiscent of a gospel choir are folded in, The Way is the ethereal opener to I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain and reflective of the record’s inspirations of biblical imagery born from Sarah Blasko’s staunch upbringing in the church that she walked away from at 17. “I had been feeling like turning my back on god may have contributed to misfortunes in my life.” Sarah Blasko shares. “Looking back upon the death of my mother, a failed marriage and then a failed friendship during a time that felt like the apocalypse. Makes sense considering I was raised to believe in the apocalypse when I was a teenager.”
The Way came about during a casual writing session with Bec Sandridge, during which they bonded over their Christian upbringings, making up joking lyrics about repenting for their sins while playing the piano. “She kept singing “Get me to church!” and I loved it,” Sarah Blasko says, “we weren’t sure if either of us were going to do anything with it, but I eventually pulled the song out and finished it off. It was originally going to be the album closer, but a friend convinced me that it was a good place to start and set the scene and I agreed.”
An album of late night reflections on goodbyes, grief, new beginnings and an important friendship that underpinned her childhood, I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain was recorded at Rancom 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 & free feeling record I’ve made,” Sarah Blasko shares.
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 and The Underscore (2004) – and two albums as Seeker Lover Keeper with Holly Throsby and Sally Seltmann – Wild Seeds (2019) and Seeker, Lover, Keeper (2011) – 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 and recently wrapped a national tour with Boy & Bear, where she debuted songs from I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain live for the first time.
Sarah Blasko – I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain
Out November 1, 2024
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