On her new album, Basia Bulat goes for weird

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Great art seldom arrives from comfort zones, so Basia Bulat went looking for new sounds in a strange city. "I went away to a place that's quite different from where I grew up," the Etobicoke-born, Montreal-based folk-pop warbler says. Her latest album, Good Advice, a tuneful adventure in chance, vulnerability and new sonic situations, was made in the Kentucky city with the slogan "Keep Louisville Weird."

"I feel for it to be true," she continues, "there's always an element of risk when it comes to what you create."

Those who took in last weekend's Grammy Awards telecast saw Taylor Swift open the proceedings with a version of her hit Out of the Woods and later win album of the year for 1989, a left-turn disc of pure pop from an artist previously known for music considered to be country.

In between Swift's excellent moments, the British singer Adele struggled through a performance of All I Ask, an unremarkable ballad from a top-selling album full of many more. In making the album, the Hello singer attempted to collaborate with Blur singer Damon Albarn, but the two failed to click when the latter tried to push the former in new directions. Later, Albarn called Adele "very insecure" and described her music as "middle of the road."

Satisfied to stay the course with stakes that are monumentally high, the superstar singer known for "rolling in the deep" now rolls only in the safest places. Bulat, though? She went for a little weird.

Speaking in a sun-splashed hotel bar on Toronto's Queen Street West, the chipper 31-year-old Bulat cheerfully recalls the making of a record that is currently receiving critical praise and big promotion. A follow-up to 2013's Juno-nominated Tall Tall Shadow album, Good Advice was produced by Jim James, the long-haired front man of the rock troupe My Morning Jacket. Devoted to transcendental mediation and otherworldly reverb, James has in the past recorded his own vocals in an abandoned Kentucky grain silo to attain the ghostly sounds he desired.

Bulat and James had struck up a friendship while touring together. Asked if James gave her any "good advice" when it came to making her new record, Bulat smiles and looks sideways out the window at the afternoon passersby. "He told me that you never know how people are going to perceive something when you're doing something different."

Something different involves less of her standby autoharp and more vintage keyboard and synthesized tones. A breakup record that documents helplessness and "big changes," the album begins big with La La Lie, a celestial cut of insistent vintage-organ shimmer and an alliterative singalong chorus. "We were looking for something bright, powerful and transitory," Bulat says.

Working without her own band, Bulat and James crafted a sound that represents no specific era, by invoking girl groups of the past and overall vibes that are spacier. The record's majesty sneaks up on the listener, with arrangements that are sparse and strange.

The bloopy, slowly building ballad Time features an old Hammond Novachord found at the National Music Centre in Calgary, where Bulat recorded the overdub. "It sounds like my dreams," she says of the rare 1940s instrument, considered to be the world's first commercial polyphonic synthesizer. "It felt like we opened up the stars when we added it."

For his part, James, speaking later on the phone from Louisville, describes his role as producer as a twofold, balancing-act job. On the one hand, "creative people need to feel a sense of trust and a sense of safety," James says, his drawl mellow and soothing. On the other hand, an artist needs to be tempted from their comfort zone. "They wanna go there, but change is hard."

And with Bulat? "She had this energy that was ready to get out, like a big scream," James says. "Basia was ready, exploding at the seams. She just needed a little push."

On the snappy, organ-drenched In The Name Of, Bulat sings in her trademark trill, "I know I can't go home again" and "Now I'm somewhere I've never been." Asked about the future, she credits James with pushing her forward. "The studio is its own world, and that's what's exciting me right now," she says. "Jim encouraged me to use the studio as an instrument."

Good advice, no doubt.

Basia Bulat plays Toronto's Mod Club on Feb. 19 and Vancouver's Fortune Sound Club on Feb. 25.