Album Review: Sara Bareilles - The Blessed Unrest

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but in the case of Sara Bareilles, her words do the painting instead. Her fourth studio album is once again a masterpiece, a collection of undying love, courage, heartbreaks and astronomical wonders. The Blessed Unrest has significantly more digital production, exploring beats, samples and electronic sounds. You can tell Bareilles is making the effort to deviate away from her usual pop-saturated records.

The record was inspired by the songwriter's latest love for astronomy and her move from California to New York that ended a relationship, all vividly and honestly laid out on the record. Opening up with Brave, the first single off the album, it's a cheerful and positive song about supporting her gay friend who recently came out of the closet. But the songbird then later rips your heart out in a soul-laden, honest track called Manhattan, where she croons, “You can have Manhattan, 'cause I can't have you”.

Her perfect pitch and skillful tone changes are flawlessly displayed, along with her beautiful falsettos – especially in Hercules, a Roman-inspired musical plea for strength, and a self-discovering Islands, that showcases her vocal range. Other tracks like Satellite Call and Cassiopeia focus not only on something out of this world, but both explore a lot more voice editing and computer generated samples. Bareilles has definitely shown that she's a risk taker and that there's so much more of her to look forward to.