Basia Bulat
Basia Bulat is a Canadian singer-songwriter whose music celebrates life’s evanescent moments in the spirit of a folkloric ritual. After releasing her fifth album, Basia’s Palace, last week [21st Feb ’25], Basia’s musical evolution is like a study of the folk tradition in microcosm. Where her early work brought rapid acclaim for its raw, visceral sincerity, her style has since evolved to encapsulate her emotional sensitivity, reverence for the natural world, and deeply-felt respect for mythology and storytelling.
If her previous album, The Garden [2022], was a literal retelling of the stories and songs that amount to both a personal and universal mythos – stories of love and loss, passion and pain – Basia’s Palace extends that concept by building a bridge between Basia’s own experiences, those of her parents and predecessors, and her children.
We spoke to Basia Bulat about her approach to songwriting, how she learnt to see the studio as an instrument in its own right, and her evolving understanding of music in the wake of her experience of matrescence.
FAULT: I’m intrigued by the continuing theme of reflecting and revisiting that permeates a lot of your music. Obviously, The Garden is the best example of that (where you literally re-arrange and re-motivate some of your previous releases), but Basia’s Palace also has that sense of going beyond nostalgia to re-write, or at least re-think, your past. What draws you so strongly to that palimpsestic approach to songwriting/the act of creation in general?
Basia Bulat: I think it must be because life, and history, keeps repeating itself! It’s also a bit of a natural impulse as an artist to study something from different perspectives over time – like Monet’s water lilies, for example. And live performance has that quality of revisiting and repeating, where you have to make something feel new and alive but try to remain inside the framework of the song you’ve been singing for however many years…
But I believe my approach to writing itself is mostly out of my own control! I’ve also always liked to describe what I do as ‘song-carrying.’ You could picture it as carrying a song from my own life to those of others, from the dream world to the ‘real world’. Sometimes it’s carrying a melody from the subconscious to a studio recording, and sometimes it’s carrying a folk song or melody passed down through generations that I’m helping to bring into the future while on stage. So I see my approach to songwriting as trying to find a way to become like a channel or a transmitter, where I pick up an idea, message, or signal outside of myself.
I feel the lyrics of the last song on my album, ‘Curtain Call’ brings those two ideas together, the revisiting and the song-carrying , the feeling of reliving something every night but being born again into something new at the same time.
Your first three albums could be broadly characterised by their stripped-back approach – almost to the point where they could be mistaken for live albums. Your next two were produced by Jim James [My Morning Jacket] and feature full bands, then The Garden has the incredible string quartet. As a result, the latter three seem much ‘fuller’, or more developed, in terms of their production. Basia’s Palace feels like it’s somewhere in between, a happy medium, if you like. Is that a fair assessment? And, if so, was it intentional?
This is a really great question! I would say every album I’ve made is strongly influenced by the environment it was written and recorded in. Sometimes that environment was by choice and other times It was a happy accident.
In the case of my first three albums, they were very informed by the fact that I spent most of my waking hours – and therefore all my writing hours – either on stage or on the road, so they have that feeling of being in the room. They were recorded very much as live as possible: the first two albums were even recorded and mixed entirely on tape. In addition to that, there is a spirit in those albums that comes from being in a state of learning, I didn’t have much studio experience and I really wanted the recordings to reflect the way I perform live. I wasn’t ready to meet the studio as if it was its own instrument yet.
I adore the albums I got to make with Jim in Louisville and Joshua Tree, and I think that the energy he brings to a studio or to any room in general is so positive and warm, and that impacted the sound of the recordings so much. And, of course, the literal environment and landscape of those two very distinct places, Louisville and Joshua Tree, had a big impact on those records as well. I have tried to keep that feeling with me since then because those experiences changed how I see recording and how I approach sessions, whether my own or when I’m showing up to someone else’s. When I started working with Jim on Good Advice, I was finally ready to learn about how to approach the studio itself like an instrument without losing the energy of a band performing live. By the time I got to make The Garden, it was as if I could take all that experience and just fly with it!
I think the thing about Basia’s Palace reaching that happy medium is because the conditions of the recording put me into the mindset of a beginner again, in a very beautiful way, but I still had the experience of all those previous albums… To begin with, I wanted to try and write the songs as demos in midi first, and I started learning about how to write songs in a very different way: ‘inside the box’, as they say, on a laptop, with synths, etc. After recording the demos, we tracked several days in a studio with a band to expand on those ideas. But, throughout that process, we kept so much of the original sounds and spirit of what I had started, and that carried all the way through into the final mixes. So it ended up being like quilting, combining the experience I have emotionally and artistically together with that newness and openness – the sound of the beginner’s spirit.
Which do you prefer: writing or performing live?
Going back to what I was saying about ‘Curtain Call’. it’s kind of the same thing for me.
The actual moment of writing, where you completely forget yourself and surrender to whatever the work is telling you to do, and the total presence that can happen when you lose yourself in a song on stage are the same state of mind for me, so I love them equally. In either situation it can feel like you’ve caught lightning in a bottle.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
Having the chance to work on and finish this album with the help of my family, friends, and so much community around me.
Holding my baby daughter while singing the vocals in ‘Baby’, and hearing my girls sing along to all the music I’ve made.
Defying the many voices I kept hearing which said that motherhood and creativity are not compatible.
How has motherhood affected the way you think about music? My partner’s a musician and, after we had our first child 2 years ago, she started talking about how far removed she felt from everything to do with her music career – the environment, the people, even the music itself – before she became a mother. Is that something you can relate to?
Oh my gosh – yes, of course! I think even without being a musician the feeling of being disconnected from yourself and your old life is so real for new mothers.
I read a lot about matrescence after my first daughter was born; it’s an astounding transformation that we go through and it’s not easy. After going through it and making it to the other side I actually feel like being removed from everything was a good thing for me… I needed to stop moving, listen to my body, and to make decisions from outside the mentality of the music-career-minded bubble… I needed to get some perspective!
Recording Basia’s Palace was actually part of the way that I worked through this transformation. Musically and lyrically there are many moments that speak to this, even the way I sing feels different, maybe softer, now, in response to this big change. I keep it in mind when I choose my collaborators too: everyone who worked on this album, especially Mark Lawson who co-produced with me, was so deeply there with me through all these shifts. I couldn’t have done it without them.
In addition to influencing the way I think about “career”, making this album also reconnected me to the power of music itself. There isn’t a day that I am not singing to or with my children. I hear music in a new way: the beginner’s spirit visited me again, and that also helped me see me through that period of matrescence as well.
Who would you most like to collaborate with and why?
I would love to work on a film score or to write for a ballet… I’ll leave it open to the universe to decide who I’ll work with next, but I’m always trying to dream a bit outside of the waters I’m used to!
You’re on an international tour (Europe and North America) at the moment promoting the new album. Are there any linguistic or cultural challenges that come with performing and releasing music internationally? I noticed you released a French language version of ‘Baby’ recently…
I think that, more than seeing it as a challenge, I’m finally feeling brave enough to try things like singing in another language. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do – ever since my first album.
I speak English, French, Spanish and Polish, and when I’m touring I always try to learn as much as I can of the local language and try to offer some way to connect that way during a show. I always loved that David Bowie did recordings in many languages over the years: in German, French, or Mandarin. Similarly, I always loved how Lhasa de Sela had songs in English, French, and Spanish all on the same album! So hopefully I’ll get the courage to do more of that too.
One fun thing about playing ‘Disco Polo’ is that I get to introduce the genre and concept to audiences that have never heard of it before. That’s been a lot of fun so far!
Any plans for a UK tour?
Yes I’m coming back in June, finally!
What is your FAULT?
Even after all this time I’m still my harshest critic. I’m too hard on myself and too nice to others – but I’m working on reversing the trend!