★★☆☆☆
She has Sir Elton John’s support, and a few days after the UK release of her ï¬ fth album Eternal Return, Australian singersongwriter Sarah Blasko has already secured a series of very positive reviews by The Guardian and Rolling Stone, among others.
Despite tackling serious issues like the perception of gender as a central part of a person’s identity, especially in the music video for the explicitly titled ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, Sarah Blasko’s songs are accessible and easy-going. Almost exclusively based on retro synth rhythm and bass parts, the 10 tracks of the album seem to rely on the repetition of key lines, like “I am ready / I said I am ready” and the singer’s versatile voice to get their message through to our ears.
In fact, there is no need to make much of an eff ort to understand that Sarah Blasko is essentially talking about love and the various eff ects it has on whoever is feeling it. Far from presenting a novel vision of romance, the various tracks successively explore separate stereotypes such as sadness and yearning.
As the cheerful accents of ‘Better With You’ gently fade into the background, it becomes more diffi cult to believe that Eternal Return is the product of in-depth introspection into the singer’s state of mind, but the touching honesty in Sarah’s smooth voice is just enough to save a listener keen on dynamism from boredom.
