Basia Bulat, Maia Friedman, The Spine Stealers

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Richmond Lam

Basia Bulat dancing.

Basia Bulat

media release: Basia Bulat shared “Disco Polo,” the third single from her new album Basia’s Palace, out February 21st via Secret City Records. A folk song named for a genre of Polish dance music beloved by her late father, the track honors the dichotomy of Bulat’s musical inheritance from him and her mother. “This is an homage to what I feel like is the two sides of my musical lineage–my mother was a classically trained piano and guitar teacher, and my father’s favourite genre was Disco Polo. About the only thing we could all agree on was the oldies radio station that was the peacemaker of our home when I was a child,” she says. “I wanted to write something that felt like a folk tale about those genres and how they still influence me after all this time–even now every time I sit down at the piano all those different musical worlds swirl around each other and try to dance together in my mind.”

“Disco Polo” is accompanied by an evocative, elegant video directed by Nora Rosenthal, who also created the interconnected clips for previous singles “Baby” and “My Angel.” “From the outset, Basia and I had spoken about having three generations of women appearing in ‘Baby,’ the first video in this series, but for ‘Disco Polo’ we wanted Louise, the woman of Basia’s mom’s generation in ‘Baby,’ to appear alongside her peers – all of them in their own way so elegant and vibrant – acting as a chorus of backup dancers,” Rosenthal explains. “For some reason we never talked about referencing ‘Disco Polo’ as a genre of 1990s Polish music until we were practically on set, but I like to think that somehow the fan blowing Basia’s hair is its own little reference to that era.” Co-produced by Bulat with frequent collaborator Mark Lawson (who worked with her on previous albums Tall Tall Shadow and The Garden), mixed by legendary engineer Tucker Martine (Beth Orton, Neko Case, The National), and featuring string arrangements by Grammy-nominated Drew Jurecka (Dua Lipa, Metric, Alvvays),

Following a European tour supporting Efterklang this month, the Montreal-based Bulat–a three-time Polaris Music Prize finalist and five-time JUNO Award nominee–will begin her North American tour in support of the album on February 14th in Calgary, Canada.

The property at the heart of Basia’s Palace is at once Bulat’s apartment, her jam-space, and the inside of her head. It is a place festooned with love and memory, and bad wiring; it’s a paradise that comes alive in the wee hours of the night–a time that’s suited to video games and dusty old records, when you sit in all that richness and take in all the mess we inherit. Basia’s Palace got its start in 2022. A new home, a new family, a pause: the singer was finally finding time to hear her own thoughts, to think about old stories, to boot up her Nintendo to play Dragon Warrior 4. It brought to mind anecdotes Bulat had heard about Leonard Cohen—how he used to do his best writing at three or four a.m., before his kids woke up, when he’d sit and toy with his Casio’s presets. Now it was Bulat sneaking down to play RPGs or to make music on her MacBook, listening for the spirit-world at a time when the veil felt thinnest. The songs she was creating didn’t feel like anything she had recorded before—MIDI soundscapes that floated and gleamed, like hidden levels above (or below) the action. And as she looked around at the relics and heirlooms of life, she found herself thinking about her memories differently, too, and finding new ways of understanding all that happened in her life across the years.

The album that emerged from all this is the softest and most searching of her career. Basia’s Palace is like a time-travel score, with Bulat akin to Chrono Trigger’s intrepid adventurer, going back into the past to shape the events of the future. After years of releasing records where live performance came first—culminating in The Garden, which reimagined some of her best-loved songs with help from a string quartet—the singer-songwriter wanted to express herself in a completely different way, composing with MIDI instead of piano or guitar. She found herself moving through a dreamworld of whispers, synths, early Eurovision tunes–and her great uncle’s gauzy Maryla Rodowicz and Marek Grechuta LPs. Throughout, Bulat pays tribute to the magic of creation and the spellwork of performance. This is the truest location of Basia’s Palace: not just the Mile End jam-space where she recorded much of this LP; not just her home, her family, or her searching spirit. But the moment itself—the one that happens on-stage, or in the instant of creation—when a song leaves Basia’s heart and leaps onto her lips. 

New York musician Maia Friedman announces her new album, Goodbye Long Winter Shadow, out May 9th via Last Gang Records, a North American tour, and presents a new single/video, “New Flowers.” From the first moments of the album, layers of strings, woodwinds, acoustic guitar and Friedman’s warm anchoring voice blossom as if to say “you are here.” The lush arrangements and sage lyricism of Goodbye Long Winter Shadow are an enveloping statement of intent. They carry the devotion to nature Friedman fostered growing up in California’s Sierra Nevada with a new mother’s exploration of time and transformation. She spent months developing the language of the album, pursuing the music she envisioned with characteristic patience. Produced with Philip Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Florist) and Oliver Hill (Magdalena Bay, Helado Negro), the result is chamber pop abounding with melodic intimacy, a world where instruments bob and weave around the heart-stopping clarity of Friedman’s voice.  

Though 2022’s acclaimed debut Under the New Light was the first album under her name, the New York-based songwriter has honed her sound for years as a member of both Dirty Projectors and Coco.  Where her debut was built from collaborative improvisation, Goodbye Long Winter Shadow is a collection of songs in the classic sense. Intimate instrumentals punctuate its running time and emphasize the connective sonic palette of orchestral instruments, pianos and guitar. Friedman’s lyricism and writing here is timeless, tightly composed and interspersed with surprising harmonic turns. If not for the heightened quality of its recording by Weinrobe, it might have been made decades ago; it’s Nico’s Chelsea Girl for today.  

To begin writing Goodbye Long Winter Shadow, Friedman visited her parents’ home in California and searched their book collection. She was drawn to the zen poetry of Jim Harrison’s After Ikkyū, its sparse forms and momentary bursts of humor. From inspiration, Friedman built a method for writing her album, one she describes as “writing writing writing - editing editing editing - repeat.” After Friedman worked over the words and chords alone with a guitar for months, she turned to Hill to orchestrate parts for strings and woodwinds, having him develop the arrangements further each time a song’s section would return. The resulting songs are immaculately balanced.  

Friedman wrote today’s “New Flowers” during a Song a Day week led by Weinrobe. Demoed in her music room with just an Omnichord, it’s probably the most pop-forward song on the album. The track is “about love lost, and the inevitable process of losing oneself and finding oneself again,” says Friedman. “I enlisted my dear friend Hannah Cohen to sing harmonies, and the closing guitarmony solo was dueled out by Maddy Baltor and I, side by side. It was joyful to say the least. We knew this one needed drums so we called in the legendary Kenny Wollesen and he got it on the first take. I love how Oliver Hill interpreted my demo into this beautiful arrangement for woodwinds and strings.” The video for “New Flowers” was directed by Ryan Faist and is made of collected studio footage filmed during the recording of Goodbye Long Winter Shadow.

 Many stories of becoming are woven into the lyrics of Goodbye Long Winter Shadow. In them, the influence of her mother, a Jungian analyst and scholar of mythology, is felt. “She writes of artworks, dreams and myths, and draws connections between the imagery, archetypes and cultures that tell similar stories in different ways,” says Friedman. “It’s a very holistic approach to talking about and exploring mythology and fairytales.” Goodbye Long Winter Shadow is full of elegant evolution as Friedman, in the refinement of her craft and her new identity as a mother, finds new depths to explore. At turns it feels both fresh and like a private press record unearthed for cult listening. It marks new heights for a songwriter operating with supreme confidence.