INTERVIEW: Sarah Blasko celebrates 10 years of 'As Day Follows Night' album with exclusive concerts: "It's been really important to celebrate it again because it was a real shift in my musical life."
In July 2009, beloved Australian singer Sarah Blasko released her third solo album As Day Follows Night. The album peaked at number 5 in Australia, charted internationally and earned Blasko two ARIA Award nominations, winning Best Female Artist.
The album is possibly one of the most perfect examples of Australian popular music of the era. Firmly in the indie lane, there are also elements of pop, rock and jazz with an experimental edge keeping you continually intrigued.
Recorded over five days in Sweden with producer Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn & John fame, Blasko has described As Day Follows Night as a "hopeful heartbreak” album. “This album feels more like it honestly expresses my tastes and my feelings,” she explained on its release. “I think that in some of the songs you feel that you're transported to another era, but I think it's difficult to pinpoint when or where that is.”
Celebrating it’s 10th anniversary in 2019 with the release of a deluxe edition of the album, Blasko had originally also planned a tour until covid derailed her plans. Now in 2022 she is finally able to celebrate in style by performing the album in full, alongside other favourites from her career, at some of Australia’s most iconic theatres.
On the eve of her Sydney show at the State Theatre on March 24, we recently caught up with Blasko to chat more about the album and tour.
Hi Sarah so wonderful to talk to you. You are revisiting your third album As Day Follows Night for it’s 10th anniversary with some performances. Can you elaborate on the album and also your intentions with the release?
I wrote the album in a very heartbroken time of my life. It was very difficult to start making the album and so I really had to talk myself into it and really gather my spirits and try and lift myself up to keep going. It was very important to me all the way through the writing that whilst I was heartbroken and wanting to find my way through that I didn't want to be taken down by it. For all of the songs I wanted them to be uplifting, particularly when I went to record the album with the production. It was a really huge record for me, because I made it at a time where I was feeling really unconfident and really doubting myself, but I actually gained so much confidence through making the record. It was the first album that I'd written entirely on my own and then I went over to Sweden and recorded it with a whole bunch of people I'd never met before, and took all of these leaps of faith. In turn, it became a really important album for me, because I did take all those chances. That's why it's been really important to celebrate it again 10 years or so later because it was a real shift in my musical life. That's what I want to revisit and it still means a lot to me, and the album still has a lot to say.
Like a coming of age album
Yeah, definitely. Everything I thought I knew before that record just turned out to not be a thing! I learned a lot from Bjorn in making the album, he really shook me out of what I thought I knew. I thought I was comfortable making music in Australia and then went over to Sweden and this really strong headed guy, very opinionated and very few words, he was kind of intimidating. Part of me really didn't like working with him, but then he really taught me about just being strong and simple and not over complicating things with music, and it was a really huge lesson to learn.
What a beautiful thing and what a beautiful thing to then be able to revisit it. We change constantly, and we're constantly coming of age, how are you feeling, going about performing these songs again, with the weight of growth, and possibly even looking back with a lot more patience and love for yourself? I imagine for the first time around there was probably a lot of trepidation and anxiety?
Yeah, I have a lot to learn still from the songs in the way that I went about them, so I've tried to look at it like that. I guess I just try and apply it to whatever struggles I might be having now. It's always really important when you perform, particularly music that you've been playing for quite a long time, you’re always trying to search for how it can feel fresh to you now. So many of the topics in the album are completely relevant to me now. It's 12 or so years on and I've got a family and I'm not heartbroken in the same way, but we all struggle with different heartbreaks. As a parent, I've got two children now, it's really difficult and it comes with a lot of heartbreaks, a lot of difficulties and a lot of letting go. A song, like ‘We Won’t Run’ is all about letting go and just facing things for what they are, accepting, and then letting go. And that absolutely remains relevant to me now. The song ‘All I Want’ is about the sort of search for knowing yourself, and that is something that we always deal with. It's quite beautiful performing the album at this time, because a lot of people are really heartbroken, and collectively there’s a feeling of people of being a bit broken. And this record I feel that it speaks a lot to that. I mean, the first song ‘Down On Love’ is about feeling completely downhearted and feeling like you have to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and actively finding your way out of darkness.
That's gorgeous. You have been playing into our ears solo since the early 2000s, and you have continued to push your sound and follow your musical curiosity with regards to collaboration and production. Where, if you can put your finger on it, where did your love of creating music originate?
It really just started with being completely curious about how it was all put together. I remember even just as a kid sitting there listening to my dad's record collection, which when you're eight years old, a record is like a huge, huge book, and I remember really studying these, and really thinking about how they put it together. I don't really know why I was curious, it was just a natural curiosity. I never had any kind of musical training so it was just a natural inclination, it was just something that grew and grew. I really fell into it, but it was there all along and I guess that's what has kept me in it, it's sort of a mystery in a way. I don't really know what I'm doing, I'm always just trying to feel my way through it. I kind of love that it just sort of developed in this very unconscious way. I've definitely had to hone it over the years, and I've played with many really good musicians and worked with a lot of great engineers and producers and I've always wanted to learn from them. They've really kept that fire and interest going, because it definitely is the people that you surround yourself with that is a huge part of [being] a solo artist.
I think you're right there, it’s was curious. On that note was how did you navigate your way into production?Again, I'm just the kind of person that somebody shows me a couple of things and then I just keep stabbing away at it very slowly behind closed doors. That was the way that I learned to sing, I just sung in my bedroom and did it over and over again and it's the same way producing, just doing a lot of recording at home, by myself and slowly learning how to use some of those tools, you know, like recording programmes and things like that. Bjorn who I worked on As Day Follows Night with, I learned a lot from him about production because like i said before everything that I thought I knew went out the window when I worked with him because he was he really valued imperfections and recording things live. We did everything to tape on As Day Follows Night so all of that really taught me a lot as well. I've just sort of gradually picked it up over time and then felt the confidence to produce my own albums, I produced I Awake and I produced Depth Of Field and then a few other bits and pieces of other works that I've done.
You started in bands and then you had this incredible solo career, and then you went back to a band with the collaboration project Seeker Lover Keeper with Holly Throsby and Sally Seltmann. Does that freedom in mixing it up both sonically and as a solo artist or in a group, do you think that just gets better the more years you have under your belt?
I think it does. The ego and the fear and all those things that can get in the way become less of an issue as you feel more confident in yourself and in what you do. The difficulty becomes that nobody wants to listen to you anymore because you're older and not new, but you actually feel like, ‘I've got so much more to offer now’. It's sort of an interesting kind of journey to take. It's funny how you can feel more confident now, but when I look at things that I did 10 years ago, I think ‘oh, that's way more confident’. It just really depends on how you look at it. In some ways you get more confident, in other ways you lose your confidence as you get older. It's a very confusing mix!
Do you think comes from the western music industry standpoint that any woman recording pop music over the age of 30 is obsolete, unless they're Beyoncé?
Yeah, it's hard to get a handle on it and I've always struggled with it, because I don't want to be bogged down by it. I don't want to be bitter, but if I'm to talk honestly, I could definitely feel quite an obvious shift at a certain point for me in terms of who would play my music and what festivals I was allowed to play, and all of those kinds of things. It's been quite a heartbreaking drop over the last few years, and I've really had to try and just get back in touch with the basics, which is actually a great thing. It's always good to go back to basics of why you do something, because it can be harder to get a sense of that when you have way less opportunities. It's quite humbling, and then to wonder why are those opportunities less? As I said, you don't want to feel you're being bitter and that you're being this and that, because I've had a very good run, so to speak. But it's definitely sad that the music industry's very insular and very small minded. At the end of the day, people don't like to take a lot of chances, and so I guess that's where being an older woman falls into that category of being a chance!
And you become the chance category - there’s an idea for music festival, you need to create it!
Yeah, The Last Chance festival! It's obvious to me where the gap is, but it's an unspoken thing, you're not allowed to talk about the elephant in the room. Particularly someone like me, who never was played on commercial radio, Triple J was always like everything to me, which in the end, it’s sad that it ends up being a detriment to me in the end, because once that sort of support drops off, for whatever reason, there is a real void in the music world in Australia because we're not quite at the point with digital radio and all that stuff like other parts of the world. It actually means a lot in terms of audience and festivals and all that because it's all tied up in this one station for people like me, because we don't get played on commercial radio. It's stuff that I actually really hate talking about, but it's increasingly important because I feel that I owe it to people that are coming up behind me, who are actually a lot younger than me and don't have anywhere to go - once you drop off that list, there's actually nowhere for people to go. I feel that I have a bit of a responsibility to find a way to talk about it, because particularly younger women that I see, they're 30 and it's like, where do you go? All these people that I really respect who have never been played on [commercial radio], and then subsequently have really struggled to have any kind of career in Australia.
I really appreciate you speaking about it, it’s a hard call from the position. As you mentioned before, it's a time to look back and reflect and what an amazing thing to do for As Day Follows Night. Lastly, before I have to leave you tell me what are you looking forward to and what else is coming up for you?
Well with the concerts, without giving too much away, for me, it's reliving the album but it's also really important for me to feel like I'm breathing some fresh life into the record. So I'm playing it probably a little differently to the album, but I think that gives us a freshness and an immediacy. I didn't want to just do it exactly as the record sounds, not that it's like wildly different, I don't want to scare anyone! Same melodies, same basic form. It’s been really great to just rediscover it and play it in a way that just feels really exciting.
Apart from that I’m doing a few other festivals and things. The big thing that I'm trying to do this year is make another record. And Seeker Lover Keeper, Holly and Sally and I have started writing a new album, which is way faster than between our first and second record by a great deal! That's really exciting, I actually value even more working with them than I used to, because I actually think I don't know what I do without having them, because we've just gone through so much together. We all put our first records out pretty much the same time and we've got such similarities and yet we're all extremely different. There's the good humour and the just ridiculousness of the three us that I really, really value.
As Day Follows Night Anniversary Tour dates
March 24 - State Theatre, Sydney (Support: Alyx Dennison)
April 9 - The Tivoli, Brisbane (Support: Elizabeth)
The deluxe edition of As Day Follows Night is out now. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Sarah Blasko you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
