Basia Bulat Opens the Gates of Her Palace at Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre

Elizabeth Weiler
6d
3 min read

Hollywood Theatre, Vancouver – April 30, 2025 | Elizabeth Weiler

Basia Bulat’s Palace isn’t a destination—it’s a capacious, lush passage to a place where old family songs, grief-soaked memories, and shimmering pop melodies coexist in shifting, flourishing balance. On April 30 at Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre, the Montreal singer-songwriter opened that space wide open, offering a night full of emotional texture and exquisitely unguarded moments.

Touring behind her seventh album, Basia’s Palace, Bulat set the tone early with Are You in Love and Heart of My Own, songs that showcase how Bulat’s voice moves with delicate force–clear, tremulous, and steeped in longing. On My Angel, Bulat leaned into a glowing early-2000s pop-folk sound: sweeping strings, a pulsing beat, and gentle autoharp textures framed her luminous vocal delivery.

The setlist was expertly paced, balancing fan favorites with the atmospheric depth of her new work. Fool and Infamous slipped by with understated precision, while Already Forgiven and Laughter offered emotional clarity while avoiding spectacle or cloying sentimentality. Midway through, Bulat tossed the structure aside for an “All Request Extravaganza,” fielding audience requests with open-hearted geniality.

One of the night’s most defining textures came from an instrument long associated with Bulat’s work: the autoharp. It’s not a flourish or a quirk—it’s foundational to Bulat’s musicianship. Woven through her arrangements with precision, its bright resonance brought clarity to the more diffuse corners of the set. On Already Forgiven, it imbued a flicker of tension beneath Bulat’s warm vocals. Bulat treats the autoharp a spine—structural, deliberate, and dimensionally textured. In a set built on memory and gauzy atmosphere, the autoharp grounded Bulat’s ephemerality.

Disco Polo broke the spell in all the right ways. Moving between Polish and English, Bulat honored her family’s musical heritage—her mother’s classical discipline, her father’s beloved folk kitsch—without flattening either into novelty. The song pulsed with light, tracing personal history by way of refracted synths and folkloric sway.

Tall Tall Shadows followed, cutting the room with intensity. While much of the evening had leaned into softness, this track surged forward with a driving pulse, its rhythmic force carving space around Bulat’s commanding vocals, at once luminous and unyielding. The drums locked in tight, the strings rising and falling with controlled energy. Bulat ignited an undeniable push in the song—a steady, building tension that felt like it might explode, but never quite did. The contrast between Shadows' measured drive and the rest of the set rendered it all the more potent.

Baby followed, offering reprieve, though it carried its own weight. A golden-lit waltz about inherited patterns and emotional inertia, it felt at once self-aware and full of grace. “Could I sing it with joy instead of sorrow?” Bulat once asked. That night, she didn’t pick a side—she let both feelings sit in the room.

And then, the encore. No fanfare. No spotlight. Just a ukulele loop and Bulat’s crystalline, golden voice. It Can’t Be You surfaced in arresting silence, looping like a gossamer thread suspended in time. Bulat stepped offstage and into the audience, her voice hovering just above the melody. Separation between artist and crowd disappeared. In this moment, Bulat summoned a spellbinding intimacy; everyone in the Hollywood Theatre knew something extraordinarily rare was happening. Bulat’s delivery was spare, controlled, and gorgeously devastating. Glasses sat untouched. People forgot to move.