Review by Tim MartinGood music should be like a sunrise. There should be brilliant hype, a shiver in the back of your neck, and the great warmth that comes from something new. At it’s best, comparable to a morning walk between glass-rimmed buildings at dawn, or that moment when a dense fog is shattered. Good records should begin with a sunrise. And the ironic thing about the opening of Basia Bulat’s latest album is the song, “Tall Tall Shadow.” A shadow is at its chief height when the sun emerges. Sure enough, when the choir joins Bulat in belting the chorus over some tasteful snare shots, cue the shivers.
The album presses forward with pensive reflections on Bulat’s past, and an ever-haunting vocal range in the grip of staccato drums. Her rhythm section is as tight as ever, and her words and voice convince me I still live in a world gently coloured by Joni Mitchell. In “The City With No Rivers” we are confronted with the environmental violence that we have committed against the Don, Humber, Rouge, and others in southern Ontario.
Her poetry is full of depth, an array of characters; figures shrouded in quiet and in shadows. The voices, the “Someone,” the Toronto cops, the second person pronouns, and the caverns of Royal York station have us situated in a country of many faces and shades. The album ends with a series of ballads that weep like letters that deserve but never receive responses. If the shivers have subsided when “Never Let Me Go” begins, then just one of Bulat’s beautiful tortured cries revives them. And then, with a seemingly effortless sweep over the ivories in “From Now On,” the album is concluded too soon. It is a sad goodbye to an album of sad goodbyes. The sun sets. Cue the shadows.
