Basia Bulat

Tall Tall Shadow

Vinyl

Regular price $24.99 CAD

Release date: September 30, 2013

Tall Tall Shadow, the third album by Toronto singer-songwriter Basia Bulat, is the bravest album she has made. Raw and spectral, heartbroken, yet jubilant, these...

Tall Tall Shadow, the third album by Toronto singer-songwriter Basia Bulat, is the bravest album she has made. Raw and spectral, heartbroken, yet jubilant, these ten songs tell the story of a very hard year in the artist’s life and all the love that helped her through it.

Whereas the singer's past two LPs, including 2008's Polaris-nominated Oh, My Darling, were made in Montreal's all-analogue Hotel 2 Stango studio, Tall Tall Shadow is a more modern thing. This is a record with echo and reverb, electronic flutters and electric autoharp, voices that charge and incandesce around buzzing guitars, lonely piano and rattling percussion.

To get to this place, Bulat co-produced the album with, Tim Kingsbury and Mark Lawson. Kingsbury, a member of Arcade Fire, "can play anything and everything," she says. Lawson, who has worked on records with Akron/Family and Colin Stetson, and who won a Grammy for his work on Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, is a studio alchemist, someone who "hears things" hidden in songs, who is always keen to transform them.

They started recording in Toronto, at a reverberating 60-year-old dance hall. Once again, Bulat put together a band: her brother, the punk-inclined drummer Bobby Bulat; Holly Coish on keys and backing vocals; Kingsbury and Ben Whiteley on guitars and bass. One song features Whiteley's father, the folk legend Ken Whiteley, on gospel organ. But Tall Tall Shadow isn't acoustic folk music: like Beck's Sea Change or Buckingham Nicks, chord and strum are a launch-pad for wilder sounds.

Bulat's goal was to keep challenging herself. "Promise Not to Think About Love," with shimmying bass and dancing handclaps, is the poppiest track she has ever released. "It Can't Be You," played on an Andean charango, is one of the simplest. "Never Let Me Go" is all crescendo, a woman in a storm, and the title track reaches soaring for the sky: has there ever been a better showcase for Bulat's powerhouse voice? For her steam-train heart?

"Two months before I was due to begin recording, I suffered a deep loss," Bulat says. "I kind of started over." She started; and she didn't stop.

by Sean Michaels

Product Details

Vinyl
Black 12” vinyl 140g
Sleeve
Single with credits and lyrics printed on inner-sleeve
Label
Secret City Records
Country of manufacture
Canada
UPC
680341330013

Musicians

Basia Bulat
Vocals / Guitar / Piano / Rhodes / Organ / Synthesizer / Autoharp / Charango
Tim Kingsbury
Guitar / Bass / Synthesizer / Vocals / Percussion
Bobby Bulat
Drums / Percussion
Ben Whiteley
Bass / Vocals
Holly Coish
Vocals / Organ
Shaun Brody
Trumpet / Vocals
Katie Saunoris
Vocals
Madisyn Whajne
Vocals
Anissa Hart
Cello
Allison Stewart
Viola
Mark Lawson
Drum Programming
Mika Posen
Violin
Eric Démoré
Vocals

Production Credits

Producers
Basia Bulat / Mark Lawson / Tim Kingsbury
Mixing
Mark Lawson / Howard Bilerman
Mastering
Harris Newman

Songwriting Credits

Tall Tall Shadow
Basia Bulat
Five, Four
Basia Bulat
Promise Not to Think About Love
Basia Bulat
It Can't Be You
Basia Bulat
Wires
Basia Bulat
The City With No Rivers
Basia Bulat
Someone
Basia Bulat
Paris or Amsterdam
Basia Bulat
Never Let Me Go
Basia Bulat
From Now On
Basia Bulat