Best selling Australian performer Sarah Blasko has delivered a deeply personal record with this her fourth album I Awake. Written holed up on England’s south coast for half of 2011, the record arrived through my door with a photocopied note from Sarah, telling how she was “haunted and unsettled” and “at times I thought this record would kill me”. Out of all this comes redemption – the opening words are very telling – “I’m awake and I’m not scared”. There is such obvious catharsis – to paraphrase Sarah again, she decided to go as big and bold as she dared, and then some. This is the voice of someone reclaiming their life, and in letting go of whatever baggage was holding her back, she soars. In ‘God Fearing’ she simply states that “biting my lip and holding my tongue was the most stupid thing that I’ve ever done”.
It’s a cohesive work rather than a collection of tracks. The massive slew of orchestration lands this piece well beyond the quieter charms of her last album As Day Follows Night. What we now have is something that feels, if not quite ‘tin pan alley, then certainly brim full of tunes that would transcend, if not quite into show-tune territory, then certainly into cinematic wide-screen orchestration. There are quieter moments too, wholly fitting something so confessional, though even these are back-filled with string glissandi. A conventional pop record it is not.
She’s a big deal at home – when I last saw her live in London, it felt as though three quarters of the capital’s antipodean émigrés were there. With this album there is every chance of broadening Sarah’s UK appeal.
[Rating:3]
