With the help of producer Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Basia Bulat brings a rich, melodramatic sheen to her confessional tales of woe. Her vocals are as warm and intimate as ever, but the band adds a bit of extra emotional muscle to her tales of heartache and rejection. “La La Lie” is a bright ode to self-deception, with a chorus that will have you singing along after the first go-round, but its cheeriness is anomalous.
On the rest of the songs, Bulat reveals her heartache to men who won’t give her a word—much less an honest emotional response—for her trouble. “Infamous,” “The Garden” and “Time” are morose explorations of dead-end relationships that the singer can’t or won’t escape from, while “Good Advice” drips with irony. The advice is that her lover feels nothing, but her yearning vocal lets you know it’s not a message she can hear.
—j. poet
