BASIA BULAT ! ! Official Website | Facebook! | Twitter ! ! ‘Good Advice’ Is the Fourth Album by Songwriter Basia Bulat
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! BASIA BULAT ! ! Official Website | Facebook! | Twitter ! ! ‘Good Advice’ is the fourth album by songwriter Basia Bulat. With an electrifying voice, lyrics like sil- ver arrowheads, she has become one of Canada's most conspicuous talents. Since releasing her debut in 2007, Bulat has shared a stage with artists including Arcade Fire, The National, Nick Cave, Daniel Lanois, St Vincent, Sufjan Stevens, Beirut, Destroyer, Tune-Yards, Sondre Lerche, The Tallest Man On Earth, The Head and the Heart, Owen Pallett, Andrew Bird and Devotchka. She often appears solo in gigantic halls, winning over crowds with an autoharp or charango, stomping feet, two mighty lungs. But her massive talent has also been recognized at scale: her songs have been adapted for major perfor- mances with symphony orchestras, and she's been tapped for prestigious tributes to Leonard Cohen and The Band.! Bulat was born in Toronto, raised by Polish immigrant parents. She grew up listening to her mother's piano students, to Sam Cooke and Stax on the oldies station, later falling in love with Odetta, Stevie Nicks, Sandy Denny and Abner Jay. Although she emerged as part of Ontario's indie folk scene, be- friending members of Ohbijou, Timber Timbre and Great Lake Swimmers, her first three records were recorded in Montreal. The first two, 2007's Oh My Darling and 2010's Heart Of My Own, were made with producer Howard Bilerman, an engineer who was then better known for noisy punk-rock albums, while 2013's Juno- and Polaris-nominated Tall Tall Shadow was produced with Mark Lawson (The Uni- corns, Akron/Family) and Arcade! Fire's Tim Kingsbury. She has lived in Montreal! since 2014. ***! Sometimes making a break-up album is driving 600 miles to Kentucky to record the free-est songs you can get to tape. Sometimes it's standing in a studio with a new friend behind the boards, and you're shouting the words, "Come back / Or don't." Sometimes it's your fourth album, sometimes it's your best, sometimes the answer to your aching! heart is a song in a major key. Good Advice is the fizzing, phosphorescing new pop LP by songwriter Basia Bulat. Captured and pro- duced by My Morning Jacket leader Jim James in Louisville, KY, it follows on 2013's Polaris- and Juno- nominated Tall Tall Shadow and two years of tour-dates alongside acts like Sufjan Stevens, Daniel Lanois and Destroyer. These are 10 songs of desire and redemption, lit up with a bottle-rocket of liberat- ed, faintly psychedelic sound. "Basia has something truly unique," James says, "and her music was a tru- ly extraordinary thing! to witness." In July 2014, Bulat got into her mom's car and drove the nine hours to Kentucky. It was the day after a career-high performance in Toronto's historic Massey Hall, a show distinguished by the debut of a daz- zling, brokenhearted new song. "Infamous" is gripping and willful, an unyielding charge in the face of a fading relationship. It is vehement and ambivalent at the same time – love, it instructs, may or may not be waiting somewhere! else. "I needed to listen to my intuition," Bulat explains. She and James first met backstage at Austin City Limits; they became friends while touring together in 2013. When it came time to record this new al- bum, Bulat was determined to continue the experiment that began with Tall Tall Shadow – challenging her creative process, experimenting with different sounds. All of Bulat's previous LPs were made in Montreal. Now she was bound for Louisville. "I knew immediately that it was the exact right place to be," she says. "To go so far from home,! then to find that it felt like home." Good Advice was created over the course of three visits to Kentucky, transforming slow acoustic demos into swift, bright pop-songs. James describes the sensation of "[seeing] Basia take control of her life," seeing sorrow and regret get washed away by singing, "watching and hearing her voice just exploding out of her soul, bringing us all! to tears in the control room." Despite a shared love for classic gospel, soul and country, Bulat and James resolved not to make a throwback record. Like his own solo LP Regions of Light and Sound of God, Good Advice mixes classic, sterling songwriting with radiant, contemporary sounds - trembling organ, loose drums, lightning-rod electric guitar. Bulat was never able to shake her vision of the night sky on 4th of July, pitch-black above a basketball court. All that "space and emptiness," all that bleakness, split apart by the "beauty and law- lessness" of amateur! fireworks. Good Advice takes that night and pours it across 41 minutes. Heartbreak calls for fireworks, and pop songs are the nearest thing. "Pop songs can take all those big statements and those big feelings that you have," she says. "You don't need to necessarily have everything so detailed because everybody under- stands. Everybody understands! those feelings." Basia Bulat's Good Advice is honest and throwing sparks. It's out February 12, 2016 on Secret City Records.! ! ! ! For press information contact [email protected] Ellie Jones . Stay Loose . +44 7849 844 143 6A Westfield Park, Redland, Bristol, UK, BS6 6LT Downloadable assets: www.stayloose.co.uk!.