Sarah Blasko’s seventh album I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain is one of late night reflections on goodbyes, grief, new beginnings, and an important friendship that underpinned her childhood, and finds one of Australia’s most revered songwriters more reflective and more personal than ever before. It was recorded at Rancom Street Studios in Sydney with engineer Brent Clark, produced by Sarah 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 and free feeling record I’ve made” - while thematically traversing both the heartbreak and quiet calm that comes with letting go of your younger self, how thin the line between tragedy and comedy becomes the older we get, and the way that time changes ourselves, our hopes and our dreams.

Across the album Sarah examines her relationship with the church and its lifelong impacts (‘The Way’), confronts dreams - both the type we have when we’re asleep and the ones we hold for our future - (‘Bothering Me’), triumphant farewells (‘Goodbye!’) and promises never to give up on her loved ones, or herself (‘Give You Up’). Elsewhere, she reaches acceptance in her journey to part with the ideas and people that no longer serve her (‘I Can’t Wait Anymore’) and pushes through to new beginnings and mindsets (‘In My Head’). Backed by unrestrained horns, she revels in all her big, dramatic and inconvenient feelings (‘Emotions’) and pays tribute to her much-loved and dearly missed friend and former tour manager, Greg Weaver, who passed away in 2019 (‘Dream Weaver’). On ‘To Be Alone’ - her most candidly autobiographical track to date - Blasko excavates the divorce she went through in her mid-20s, a split that saw her run from commitment for many years afterwards - until now, where she finds herself happily ensconced in a domestic life once again, mother to two children who help her see the world in new ways. And, finally, on ‘Divine’, Blasko clutches tight to the beauty in the small moments of the everyday. Despite roaming some big subject matter, I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain is a declaration of positivity and hope amidst the difficulty of life, one that recognises the duality in all things, and pushes forward into the light.

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 & the Underscore (2004) - and two albums with Holly Throsby and Sally Seltmann as Seeker Lover Keeper - Seeker, Lover, Keeper (2011) and Wild Seeds (2019) - 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 in 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.