The Fat Angel Sings

“Your Girl” is a wistful folk-pop song in the tradition of Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs – crisp and clean in structure, but earthy and wholesome in aesthetics. Basia Bulat’s perspective is somewhat ambiguous in this song, shifting between a first-person testimonial about how she’s become hesitant to fall in love after some difficult experiences and choruses in which she’s addressing someone else about how they’ve let down their girl. It could just be that she’s talking to the one who wronged her, but there’s a suggestion of elapsed time. It could be advice to a friend, a warning to an ex that they’re keeping up the same mistakes, or maybe it’s just her reliving the same old traumas. But it’s notably that the song isn’t bitter or angry, just resigned to the seemingly inevitable catastrophes of people getting close to each other.

I wrote “Your Girl” during one of those classic Montreal snowstorms (mon pays c’est l’hiver!) and recorded it under the warmest desert sun in Joshua Tree. Then we added some beautiful harmonies in the springtime. So of course it only made sense to film a video for the song in the autumn rain. The song is about getting free from a painful situation, when there’s joy but there’s also heartbreak – and trying to understand why those storms came through your life the way they did feels impossible. So you to the wind and dance with the memory instead.

Basia Bulat’s new album Are You In Love? is due out March 27th via Secret City, and she’s shared another early taste of it, “Already Forgiven.” Speaking about recording in Joshua Tree, Basia says, “one day Andrew recorded the wildest wind outside and sent the signal through a path of electronics and the swirling feeling of those floating melodies that drift through the song are as important as the lyrics to me. The harmonies are there even if you can’t hear them at first listen. It can take years to say it, but you’re already forgiven.”