SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: BASIA BULAT – BASIA’S PALACE

BASIA BULAT
BASIA’S PALACE
SECRET CITY RECORDS

Etobicoke singer-songwriter, autoharpist, and Dragon Warrior aficionado Basia Bulat’s seventh studio album will undoubtedly be met with the same isolated passion that’s fueled her 18-year career orbiting indie darlinghood. Nominated for a Polaris Music Prize, her 2007 debut established her fully-formed, pop-adjacent pedigree – an obvious descendent of Joni Mitchell, but also Sam Cooke and Odetta. Simple, soulful songs with thoughtful lyrics and sincere, lush orchestration.

A handful of her songs have leaked over into the mainstream. She’s opened Hockey Night in Canada, soundtracked commercials for Volkswagen, Nintendo, and Subaru. If you know one Basia song, it’s “Tall Tall Shadow” from the 2013 album of the same name, an ironically uplifting ditty about never escaping your true Self, never outrunning the lies you’ve told. This reflection haunts and graces her best work. In interviews, she celebrates the muse-like properties of the Great White North’s quiet solitude, which can be a psychological burden but also a blessing—perfectly representative of her discography at large. The surface-value dopamine masks the darker subtext and soul searching.

Basia’s Palace, similarly, beckons the listener inside a ramshackle mind where everything discordant and dust-free appears properly and familiarly in its place but eventually reveals subtle outlines where things used to be. The album opens with “My Angel,” a song celebrating the art of new love while also detailing a fractured and emotionally desperate narrator: “Singing me through the darkness, hearing the message/Love never-ending taking a breath in/Love is like a bird just flying by.” Interpretations shift depending on individual perspective.

The album’s standout track, the nostalgic “Disco Polo,” boasts a MIDI-inspired drum beat and waxes fondly about her upbringing amidst her parents’ conflicting musical tastes. Her mother was a classically trained guitarist and her father’s particular fetish was disco polo (1980’s Polish dance music – and it’s exactly what you’d expect it to sound like). The song’s an ode to the fond memories of family, the beauty of personal eccentricities, the pain of personal loss, and the things you never thought to ask until it was too late.

That conflict in her sound, a 21st century indie folker with a heart full of mid-century soul, made her a musician worth watching in 2007 and the same dynamics remain true in 2025 – but that’s not to suggest she hasn’t grown as an artist or a lyricist. On Basia’s Palace, Bulat’s added subtle soundscape shifts and toyed with electronic composition. These new tricks might not change her orbit around the current, nebulous indie music scene, but her regulars will be more than happy to once again gather ‘round the parlor autoharp.

As “Curtain Call” concludes the album, she takes a passionate final bow filled with naked imperfections:

“When the lights go on again/
My love, forgive me for it all/
Let myself be loved again/
With every line of every single song.”

A “call” to arms on each record she’s ever made; the truest verses, the sincerest songs are the ones in conflict with themselves, a singer-songwriter assessing the scars and ephemeral clutter that comprise inspiration.

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