Fortunately, the prizefighter managed to battle on with the aid of a cup of tea! “I’m not used to your British weather,” she apologised. She actually had to take up the song again half-way through. The poor woman then actually lost her voice while performing ‘Gold Rush’ from ‘Heart’, solo on her trademark autoharp. “Just because I wear a gold cape now doesn’t mean I don’t play folk songs anymore,” Bulat pointedly introduced this section of the gig to emphasise that a change of style isn’t the same thing as a change of substance. The lyric amounts to a statement of Bulat’s artistic intent, which pits woman’s traditional role, “the maid or the mother I’ll be,” against that of the poet, “the light in your verse and the shadow between.” Basia Bulat Photo: Iain Fox Now we have a song about self-delusion, her own above all, a favourite Bulat theme, particularly in relation to affairs of the heart.įour songs from her previous folk-inspired albums followed, notably the title-song from the second, ‘Heart of My Own’, which she performed solo. This takes the lilting chorus from Paul Simon’s ‘The Boxer’ and changes the emphasis from the innocuous ‘la’ to the damning ‘lie’, as in deceit. The highlight of this section of the show was undoubtedly the album’s opener, ‘La La Lie’. Playing acoustic guitar, but with loud backing, she launched straight into four songs from her new album. The star of the show came out to a heroine’s welcome paradoxically dressed in a prizefighter’s gold cape and minidress. Their backing was electric throughout, particularly after the thankless task of performing the warm-up. We were fortunate, though, to have an electra-piano and support from Canadian folk band The Weather Station, whose leader Tamara Lindeman provided backing vocals, with Ben Whiteley on base, Ian Kehoe on drums and Adrian Cook on guitar. So it was unfortunate that ‘The Garden’ was absent from this show, although Bulat has said that she’d love to find a way to do it live. Now Manchester’s Soup Kitchen hosted the third date of a European tour following a sell-out gig in London.īulat is on record as saying that her songs are always written with a view to performance. The chorus: “Oh, don’t look back/And if you don’t you won’t be lost,” recalls Bob Dylan’s ‘She Belongs To Me’ with its: “She’s an artist, she don’t look back.” A plaintive saxophone solo perfectly conjures up longing for lost love against which the lyrics fight bravely.Īn extensive promotional American tour featured an impromptu 32nd birthday celebration at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City at the beginning of April. The album, in fact, provides a thrillingly tense stand-off between passion and detachment.įor me, the outstanding lyric is ‘The Garden’, which, if used in a feature film, would probably win an Oscar outright for best original song. In stark contrast, Basia Bulat’s ‘Good Advic’e aims more for an artist’s arms-length debrief on her own break-up, although no less emotionally-charged. The break-up album that has had the biggest impact on me, though, was Sinead O’Connor’s ‘I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got’, which made grieving with a grievance world-famous in 1990. Trailed as a break-up album and produced in Kentucky by Jim James of My Morning Jacket, the songs represent a major shift from folk to rock, memorable for their 1970s RMI electra-piano accompaniment favoured by bands such as Genesis, Yes, and Deep Purple, and a chorus of female backing singers.īreak-up albums seem all the rage at the moment, with Gwen Stefani’s ‘This is What the Truth Feels Like’ making much of her recent divorce from Gavin Rossdale and All Saints’ ‘Red Flag’ referencing Nicole Appleton’s split from Liam Gallagher. Last February, she released her fourth, ‘Good Advice’. Her first three folk-inspired albums, the first two released by London-based Rough Trade Records, were all in the running for Canada’s leading music awards. Canadian singer-songwriter Basia Bulat has often been compared to Joni Mitchell and Joanna Newsom.
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