Sarah Blasko can’t stop looking at a packet of porridge. It’s been staring her down all morning, propped up in its vantage point over in the corner of a vast, empty room at the headquarters of Universal Music Australia, the label set to release her sixth record, Depth Of Field.

“Mind if we sit somewhere else?” Blasko asks, glaring comically at the distraction from the corner of her eye. And so we do, over to a futon by a window, Blasko chatting animatedly about the stifling hot Sydney weather while we move. But we have only been settled into our new spot for a few moments before Blasko’s attention is caught by something else: a passage of gigantic Italian phrases, printed on the wall behind my head.

“This is such a strange room,” Blasko says with a laugh, her eyes flashing. “What is going on in here?”

Which all makes it sound maybe like Sarah Blasko is easily distracted; easily thrown. But nothing could be further from the truth. When the conversation proper begins, the singer-songwriter’s attention doesn’t waver for a moment. She talks quickly but with purpose, answering each question not like a musician who has already had to endure a long morning of press – all while being stared down by a packet of oats, no less – but like someone who finds it particularly important to say exactly what she means.

That level of honesty is reflected in Blasko’s new record, Depth Of Field. Lighter, brighter than 2015’s excellent Eternal Return, it is the sound of a musician at their true peak: an effortlessly cool, expertly controlled collection of songs about reinstating the boundaries of the self. Across it she snarls, snaps, and comes to sound like someone who has resolutely given up on pleasing people – on ‘A Shot’, the record’s blistering lead single, she sings the lines, “you expect me to believe / You only wanted what was best for me?” She has never sounded so assured.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The BRAG: Does it get lonely, making music?

Sarah Blasko: Sometimes. I very actively chose to write with other people for this record. I couldn’t stomach the solitary path. Sometimes that solitude is really welcome and exactly what you need – but this time I knew I didn’t need that. I felt like it wasn’t going to produce very healthy fruit. I needed to be around other people, and I needed to be inspired by people.

I have always kinda worried I am too creatively selfish to work with other people.

It is a worry – it can be hard. It can be a real struggle at times. I reach a certain point sometimes where I just need to take things into a quiet room and close the door. The musical part of things – particularly just the forming of ideas – can feel fun in a group, but only up to a point.

I’m a bit of a walker-outer. I’m all fine, fine, fine, fine, then all of a sudden I’m not fine.

I’m a bit of a walker-outer. I’m all fine, fine, fine, fine, then all of a sudden I’m not fine. It’s not something I’m proud of. It really shocks people sometimes. Most projects I’ve ever worked on, there’s been a moment when I’ve all of a sudden not been okay, and people get really freaked out by that. I think I’ve often thought it would be better for people to see [the anger] in you constantly in action, rather than it just exploding.

I guess that level of tension comes with the fact that music-making is so personal…

Exactly. It’s gotta be personal to a degree. You have to care about it so much that you want to fight for it. You want to be able to get a handle on what it is that you’re making. So there has to be a handful of those tense moments.

It’s more than just a job. It’s a weird job. It’s a weird thing to do.

Has your process changed over the time you’ve been making music?

It has changed for this album. This was the most pleasurable album-making experience I’ve ever had. It was so pleasurable that I felt guilty about it. There was a time when I was making I Awake and I was in Stockholm and I was just so stressed out that I thought I was going to self-combust. I’m the kind of person who would genuinely light on fire. I just get that stressed.

But I don’t think I stressed out during the making of this album. Although maybe the people I made it with would say, ‘Hmm, well actually…’ I don’t think I even worked out.

It was so pleasurable, but I think that’s because I’ve got other things going on in my life – I’m a parent; I have other things that are more stressful than making music. Which means music has become even more the relief. When I make music now, I just enjoy those moments so much. I long for them now. And I get a lot of those moments, because I have plenty of time now [my son] is a little older. I relish it now in a different way than I used to.

When I was younger, I had a lot of tension in everything I did. I grew up in quite a religious household, and there was often this sense of not enjoying the things of the world too much. But I think as I rid myself of that more and more, I learned to enjoy life, and relish things more.

I had to really reconnect with the process of enjoying making music, because I had lost my joy for most things.

It’s not good to chill out completely when making music, but it’s also okay to enjoy the process of making. I had to really reconnect with the process of enjoying making music, because I had lost my joy for most things. I had to rid myself of the industry, and all those concerns.

Just before I made this record, I went through a process of really remembering why I started doing this in the first place. I rid myself of the garbage elements of who I had become over the last ten years or so. And I was sort of forced into that by life circumstances. I just reached one of those life crisis points that I think everybody comes to at various ages and times. So maybe that’s why the album became – potentially more so than other times – about the process and enjoying the process and savouring the process. The process is everything. Which is potentially a really obvious thing to say, but I needed to remember that. Because otherwise you can get too focused on the end result, or… just over things. It’s about really making the most of the process.

It is funny how you can do that – how you can just allow yourself to accrue all this stuff, till you go, ‘Why am I even doing this?’

Yeah, and I think I had just felt so defeated as a person, that I just… I don’t know. But in some ways it was good to get to that point where you have to get in touch with your truth. Because sometimes you get to a point where you can’t even physically keep going. So there is some truth to that cliché about doors closing in your face and others opening. It’s kind of great. It’s good to be appreciative.

And does that mean when things are going better, the music-making does become cathartic?

I think music-making has always been cathartic for me. It’s a release – particularly playing onstage. It’s escaping the mundane. It brings a magic into the mundanity of everyday life. You feel like you can bring things into life that you might wanna say, or that you long for. There’s a power in your acknowledging things – it transports you.

I guess that’s historically the power of music. There’s this looking beyond what’s here, either in an emotional way or speaking powerful words that can propel people into the future, or into a better way of looking.

Sometimes you get to a point where you can’t even physically keep going.

That’s always the way it has been for me. Because I don’t really know what I’m doing – I don’t play an instrument that well. I sort of go with my gut, and music provides that for me; it provides this transportive quality. And when I don’t perform, and I don’t make much music, I feel it. I don’t feel as together as a person.

It’s not an ego thing. It’s actually just a release … It’s kinda sad when you forget that; when you have that time where you don’t play music, and then you go back to it, and you go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right: this is pleasurable.’

Do you get worried by the fact that art-making can be impulsive like that? Like that it can come and go?

Well, see with this record, I made it while I was an artist-in-residence. And while I’m a believer in the fact that [art] can come to you, I do think that sometimes you need to lock in some time and make it happen. There’s a time for everything, I think, as the famous Biblical passage says. And there’s definitely a time for just grabbing it by the collar and making yourself be creative.

So I feel like the artist-in-residence was a perfect opportunity in that way: it was a great way to get the process started. Wherever I was at, wherever my life was at, we just had to get started – we had these two weeks, and we couldn’t do nothing there. I just wanted to anything I could to make a creative space that was really inspiring.

I suppose nothing could have come from it at all – that was the risk with it. But pushing ourselves to do something ended up being really good. It ended up being very fruitful, and encouraging.

You do wanna always think too, ‘Well, what is it that I’ve wanted to do my whole life?’ I had always wanted to make an album with an orchestra, and it was so satisfying when I did it [with 2012’s I Awake.] It was like, this is something that I have been wanting to do since I was a child.

Then I realised that I had always wanted to make an album in a performance space. You know, whenever you’re doing sound checks or warming up before playing, you sometimes play around with musical ideas, but you never have the time to actually do anything substantive with them. It always felt really exciting though – it felt exciting to start an idea for a song and think, ‘Wow, that could have really gone somewhere.’

So just recreating that environment, with the lights, and the volume… It just felt like something I had always wanted to try. It was like us in our natural habitat; we’re used to spending time together, and doing that stuff together.

Do you ever worry about overfiddling with your music?

Oh yeah. Sometimes if you get into a computer too much you can lose sight of things. I think it is always better to write a song in a non-stylised way to begin with, because you can take it anywhere from there. But once you rely too much on the sounds, you can kinda forget about melody. I think a song should be able to be played in so many ways.

I have always been suspicious of music that’s very tricky… Music with too much going on; show-off music. Although, maybe I don’t like show-off music because I can’t show off. People who are really trained can do that; I can’t. Although those people would probably look at my music and think, ‘That’s so juvenile. It’s only got three chords.’

A few times I’ve read reviews and they’ve said things about that. I always enjoy the ones that hate what I’ve done. One review said, ‘Buy this is if you hate melody.’ It was really damning: ‘buy it if you like a droning singer with no expression in your voice.’ I was like excellent; great. I love that. [Laughs.]

Depth Of Field is out this Friday February 23 through Universal Music Australia, and Sarah Blasko plays the Metro Theatre on Friday June 1. 

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