Background

Introducing THE GARDEN: a strings album and a retrospective from a room in Montreal with the windows open, and the wind moving, and the leaves changing, and a spring-coloured secret on the tip of Basia Bulat’s tongue.

The band made it in a pandemic. Bulat and her old friend Mark Lawson, with whom she recorded the Polaris- and Juno-nominated album Tall Tall Shadow. Bulat and her husband, Legal Vertigo’s Andy Woods. Bulat and her friends Ben Whiteley, Zou Zou Robidoux, Jen Thiessen, John Corban and Tomo Newton, four fifths of whom form a string quartet, because did we mention this is a strings album? Not a greatest hits but a re-configuration: a chance to record anew some songs that Bulat didn’t fully understand when she originally composed them, five or ten or fifteen years ago. As she first sang in 2006 - and again last fall, in that second-storey apartment: We gave away our hearts / before we knew what they were.

THE GARDEN gathers fourteen string arrangements by three different arrangers (Owen Pallett, Paul Frith, and Zou Zou Robidoux), revisiting material from all five of Bulat’s studio albums. There’s Pallett’s interpretation of 2010’s HEART OF MY OWN, calling back to the Béla Bartók compositions that marked Bulat’s high-school career as an upright bassist. There’s Frith’s INFAMOUS which turns 2016’s prickly kiss-off into something open-facing and generous. And there’s Robidoux’s reimagining of ARE YOU IN LOVE? - released just last year - which here becomes a whirling ballroom dance, full of discovery.

Bulat performs throughout, finding new feelings for old lines. Distance teaches; distance reveals things. “I sing the songs differently now,” she says. “It’s the gift of time.” Not just that: at the time of recording, Bulat had just found out she was expecting her first child. (Her daughter was born in April 2021.) She admitted it to her collaborators only in the midst of recording, down a wire from the vocal booth. “Hold it up to the light and let it grow,” Bulat sang once - and again that fall, as her body changed shape. “Tell me you’re always my only.” A song can change shape too - turning new leaves, growing new blooms, in unexpected seasons. You can play a record once; you can play it again. The Garden won’t wear out. It’s alive.

Biography

Basia Bulat, is a young Canadian folk singer-songwriter. She is known for performing with an autoharp.

Bulat grew up in Etobicoke, Ontario where her mother was a music teacher who taught piano and guitar. She is of Polish origin and a member of the Canadian Polonia. She has said the radio at home was permanently tuned to an oldies station. “I don’t think I realised the radio had more than one station until I was 11 or 12,” she says.

She attended the University of Western Ontario where she received a degree in English; she also took some classes with Olenka Krakus of the band Olenka and the Autumn Lovers. Bulat began an MA in English at Western in 2006 but moved to Montreal to record “an audible memory” of her time there which resulted in her debut album.

Although Bulat no longer lives in London, Ontario, she has recognized the importance of London in establishing her career: “London has always been so supportive of me. I feel like the city really adopted me,” she says. “It wasn’t part of a larger commercial music industry but a small, close-knit scene, which was kind of nice.”

Bulat released an independent EP in 2005 and was subsequently signed to Rough Trade Records, which released her full-length debut album, OH, MY DARLING in April 2007, produced by Howard Bilerman. The album was later released in Canada by Hayden’s Hardwood Records.

Her singles ‘Snakes and Ladders’, ‘Little One’ and ‘I Was a Daughter’ have been playlisted on CBC Radio 3 while various tracks have received airplay on college radio in Canada and the United States. Her album OH, MY DARLING made the shortlist for the 2008 Polaris Music Prize.

Bulat has toured across Canada, the US and Europe; in June 2008, she ventured to Australia. She played the 2008 Dawson City Music Festival in the Yukon. Bulat cited the week she spent in the quiet and remote location as an inspiration for her songwriting.

Her second album, HEART OF MY OWN, also produced by Howard Bilerman, was released by Rough Trade Records in the US and in Canada via Secret City Records on January 26, 2010. It peaked at number 13 on the Billboard charts on February 13, 2010. Bulat appeared on Hockey Night in Canada on December 10, 2011, during which she sang the Canadian national anthem at an Ottawa Senators game at Scotiabank Place (now the Canadian Tire Centre).

On September 30, 2013, Bulat released her third album TALL TALL SHADOW worldwide via Secret City Records. It was produced by Tim Kingsbury and Mark Lawson. The album was nominated for a 2014 Juno Award in the Adult Alternative Album of the Year category, and was a shortlisted nominee for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize. The album has been well received in Canada and the United States. It peaked at number 25 on the Billboard charts on October 19, 2013.

The song ‘Tall Tall Shadow’ was featured in the opening video montage on Hockey Night in Canada prior to the games between the Chicago Blackhawks and Toronto Maple Leafs, and the Montreal Canadiens and New York Islanders on December 14, 2013.

Her fourth album, GOOD ADVICE, was produced by My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James and was released on February 12, 2016. It became a shortlisted nominee for the 2016 Polaris Music Prize. The title of the album refers to female friends whom she relied on during a recent breakup. It peaked at number 22 on the Billboard charts on March 5, 2016.

STUDIO ALBUM RELEASES

Oh, My Darling (2007)
Heart of My Own (2010)
Tall Tall Shadow (2013)
Good Advice (2016)
Are You in Love? (2020)
The Garden (2022)

https://www.secretcityrecords.com/artists/basia-bulat/?msclkid=dc9e5200d04f11eca04d272d4db1f3c0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basia_Bulat
https://found.ee/Basia-TheGarden?page_id=153/