Portions for Foxes: Basia Bulat

"Portions for Foxes" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song by a woman or a band led by a woman. See the introduction for more.

This week I don't have a fancy introduction, or some quirky connection - just a great song by a great singer-songwriter that I've been listening to for a decade and wish that more people knew about. It's one of those songs that starts relatively quiet and contained and just gets big before the end - owns its space, takes it over, filling your ears and telling its story.

This is Tall Tall Shadow by Basia Bulat. It's about what you can get away from, and what you can't.

You can’t run away
When the shadow is yours

There's something reminiscent of the '60s in the song for me - that feeling of size and importance, Bulat's clear crisp voice, the chorus behind her at the climax, the keyboards that open the song and provide most of the backing, the tick-tock drum beat that opens out to the big orchestration for the second half of the song.

I don't know who she's singing to: it could be herself, or someone specific, you, or me, or all of us. 

No, there is no lie that you can live in
Tear it apart
Your own confession
Made in the dark

In the end, it's a song about how you can't fool yourself, no matter how hard you try. That's a lesson so many of us need to keep learning, need to keep hearing. And this is a glorious, ringing, triumphant way of hearing and believing it.