Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The need to emphasise just how important the art of storytelling is to the human spirit and the soul has never been greater. In a time of flux, in a period where we are tied by the shackles of unyielding and unrepentant dogma dressed in the clothes of pragmatism, the chance to sit in The Garden and feel the buzz of a natural lesson imparted rather than the forced rhetoric of statement, confirmed declaration, and the account of madmen in their offices.
It is in the lesson of the delivered fable that Montreal’s Basia Bulat lays down her understanding of the world through the memories of childhood, and the eyes and the voice of the inspired adult, and in the bold artistry of her latest album, The Garden, the often-painful truths that we tidy away in crevices and cracks, are dusted off, are revealed through song and the melody of story alike, the aural tradition is once more flowing, radical, dramatic, and a moment of re-imagination.
The Garden is about the creative urge to retell a story but from a different perspective, it is about fluidity of movement, and one that Basia Bulat deserves plaudits and admiration for putting together, for having the courage to re-examine an older tale and giving them a refreshing new angle in which the newcomer to delve, and the older fan a secret room opened, a character from the past given a new face.
Across an album that contains such tracks as The Shore, I Was A Daughter, Fables, Love Is At The End Of The World, Infamous, and In The Name Of, Basia Bulat, alongside John Corban, Tomo Newton, Jen Thiessen, Sarah Page, Andrew Woods, Ben Whiteley, and classical string arrangements by Owen Pallett, Paul Firth, and Zou Zou Robidoux, unleashes a major force of creativity, akin to finding the most loved novel in your collection has been recreated with extra characters, hidden depth unveiled, or the one you love has kept the most beautiful secret from you and slowly unburdens themselves to you.
In a time of flux there is nothing more reliable than constant change, and in The Garden the flowers of renewal and revolution is a wonderous moment to witness take place before your eyes. A variation on a theme, a hidden detail revealed, Basia Bulat story keeps on going.
Basia Bulat’s The Garden is released on February 25th via Secret City Records.
Ian D. Hall