CD Reviews

Basia Bulat | Heart Of My Own

Rough Trade (2010)

By ZETH LUNDY | January 27, 2010

3.0 Stars

Like a Laurel Canyon Billie Holiday or a pixilated Tracy Chapman, Bulat sports a voice rich with vibrato, hearty oomph, and dignified lonesomeness. On her sophomore album, autoharp, banjo, ukulele, sleigh bells, and strings provide a warm tapestry of sound, and yet her voice is the instrument that does the enveloping.

"Run," "Gold Rush," and "If Only You" are pastoral, insistent gallopers that run on widescreen emotion. Still, there's an intimacy in Bulat's quivering delivery that even the most orchestrated tracks cannot obscure.

The stripped-down "Sugar and Spice" and "The Shore" are intimate, sure, but the power of Bulat's music lies in the way it transfers the bedroom to the woods. Heart of My Own amplifies guarded things, a tuneful prototype of new-century folk intent on having its voice heard.

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