Although many of my musical faves are singer-songwriters, I maintain what I think is a pretty healthy suspicion of the breed in general, and this has carried through into my not having been particularly attentive as far as the new crop of female Australian s-s/writers go. Sarah Blasko, though, has gradually come to stand out over the last few months; I first heard her through her spare, spectral reading of "Don't Dream It's Over" on the wonderful She Will Have Her Way, and her songs always seem to be playing on the radio, first thing in the morning as I'm struggling towards wakefulness, too early (it's been a long time since I was a triple j kid but I still wake up to the strains of the station every weekday).
It's a good context in which to hear this music, too - groggy, still half dreaming, wrapped in darkness with perhaps scattered light straggling through. But what started to strike me after a while, after the pleasing crystalline starkness of Blasko's sound had become more familiar, was the strength of the songs and the melodies - while they're not the sort to have one humming them all day long, nonetheless each one stuck after I'd heard it. I couldn't have hummed one if I'd tried - not after only that one hearing - but I knew I'd know any of them if I heard them again. And in fact, that's how it's turned out - "[Explain]" I think I'd heard a few times (during the day as well), but I'm certain I'd only heard "Always On This Line" and "Planet New Year" (that latter, wryly sweet and more upbeat, too, being the one that tipped me into buying What The Sea Wants...) once each yet knew them straight away when I heard them tonight on record. So even though I didn't really know any of her songs beforehand, the album sounded half-familiar to me - again, dream-like. Reference points: New Buffalo, Laura Veirs (and I think that Blasko sometimes sounds like a female Thom Yorke). Favourite song possibly "The Garden's End". This will be an apt accompaniment, I think, as the nights grow longer and winter creeps stealthily closer.
