Lets get one thing out of the way: Basia Bulat doesnt live in a chteau. The property at the heart of the songwriters new studio album is at once her apartment, her jam-spaceand the inside of her head. Basias Palace is a place festooned with love and memory, bad wiring; its a paradise that comes alive in the wee hours of the night, at a time thats suited to video games and Leonard Cohen records, when you sit in all that richness, taking in all the mess we inherit.

Reuniting with co-producer Mark Lawson, she found herself moving through a dreamworld of whispers, synths and early Eurovision tunes, Cohens Im Your Man and Airs Moon Safari, her great uncles gauzy Maryla Rodowicz LPs. The result feels like an album that was concealed behind the backings of Bulats childhood photostracks like My Angel, where mystery and romance mingle over squelchy synths + drum-machine, with a soaring string arrangement by Drew Jurecka (Dua Lipa, Alvvays), or Laughter which was mixed, like all tracks on the record, by legendary engineer Tucker Martine (Beth Orton, Neko Case, The National) that takes a quiet domestic scene and sees it build to a deafening sublime. Disco Polo is a track Bulats been threatening to make forevera folk-song named for a genre of trashy Polish dance music that was beloved of her fatherwhereas Baby, which took years to finish, makes an elegant dance number out of an oh-too-familiar predicament: Baby, baby, baby, Basia sings, I dont learn! At some moments there are shades of Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardots Bonnie and Clyde or Charles Aznavours Emmenez-Moi; at others its the silicon-shiny sweetness of The Cardigans Lovefool or Airs Moon Safari.