I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain finds one of Australia’s most revered songwriters more reflective and more personal than ever before. It is a record about 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 time changes ourselves, our hopes and our dreams. Recorded at Rancom Studios in Sydney, I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain has been the long-time singer-songwriter’s most relaxed album yet, one that she made more effortlessly than anything before it. In making this record – which she produced herself – Blasko focussed on enjoying herself in the studio rather than fixating on the result. That approach fuelled some of the most beautiful, assured and honest work of her long career. But despite the big subject matter it traverses, I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain is not a work of doom and gloom. The album’s title – just like the record itself – 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. As Blasko sings on ‘I Can’t Wait Anymore’: “I can’t afford to go back/ I don’t want what I lack/ I wanna live like I’m reborn!” Blasko has previously released six solo albums across her twenty years in the music industry and a further two as part of the supergroup Seeker Lover Keeper, her discography including four Platinum-selling albums and four that have reached the ARIA Top 10. She is the recipient of three ARIA Awards and a J Award and beyond her own material, Blasko has also written music for Bell Shakespeare productions and composed for Sydney Dance Company.