Longlisted for this year’s Polaris Music Prize, the sheer brilliance of the poetry on this disc alone makes me rave about Lhasa. It also helps that her music comes from beautiful and non-existent lands – it’s trippy. Bring together subtle Mexican rhythms, layers of floaty harps and vocals, possibly a little gypsy (not to mention Patrick Watson), and there lies the lovely Lhasa. Most arrangements are complicated and tastefully simplistic, some with only a few chords and vocals, but it lets there be a sort of art from bare intention. Simple phrases can be telling, like “I used to say / I am ready show me the way / Then another year or two / Would pass me by.” It could get heavy on the introspection, so Lhasa has its place and time, but so it seems with most things of beauty.

Published in Volume 64, Number 2 of The Uniter (September 10, 2009)