Heart Of My Own is Basia Bulat's second album, and she inhabits the center of every song - her swooping voice, and the stringed thrum of an acoustic instrument - with a host of help from friends and colleagues playing the likes of drums, cello, violin and all manner of things pretty and chamber-oriented, around the edges. Her music is covered in the residue of Americana, though she and her colleagues are Canadian, she seems to inhabit similar spaces as compatriots Ohbijou, The Acorn, Woodpigeon and etc. An outwardly full and substantial sounding album, Heart Of My Own can actually be easily reduced to Bulat's voice and the melody, really a folk sound at heart with sometimes unnecessary dressing up.The common thread of her wonderful voice flows through all the styles, the uptempo 'Gold Rush', 'If Only You', the busy 'Run', 'Walk You Down', and the spare and fragile 'Sparrow', and they are only as strong as that vocal's performance. I'm not saying the dressing up from the other instruments is unnecessary, just that they never seem to match or add to what is inherent in her voice and melodies. Her voice has this amazing quality, it sounds live somehow, a beautiful clear tone that is somehow interfered with by a very subtle watery rasp, or a wobble akin to Antony Hegarty.So there are sweeping pastoral melodies and thrusts (title track), regret and sadness and exultation, vague countryish moments, pulsating arrangements; but what you really want are great urgent moments like in 'Gold Rush' where the line "Another story of one you lost and I wanted to run over", is delivered, or the one that recalls previous non-album cut 'In The Night' for catchiness, like 'If Only You', or the one that has a brilliant bluesy bruised yet resurgent emotional feel like 'If It Rains'.Of course one of the best moments on the album, including the contribution from others, is one of the sparest tracks. 'The Shore' is a mournful song of loneliness, but filled with bittersweet beauty. Minimal off-kilter instrumentation relies on reverb and space to convey pain laced with glints of comfort. Some sort of stringed instrument, plucked almost off key notes sounding like a cross between plucked violin and harp, and a beaten up acoustic sounding thing strummed in the background, almost like hammered piano strings. Tremendous male and female harmonies rise in the background on the 'I love you so' parts, and you go all melty when you listen to it.

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