Norine Braun's 'A Hero In the Wind' glows with raw, unfiltered soul

Some albums feel meticulously carved over months of careful sculpting. Norine Braun’s 'A Hero In The Wind' feels like it arrived alive, breathing, and still warm from the moment it was born.

Recorded largely in one-take, one-hour bursts during Steve Dawson’s Henhouse live sessions, Braun’s latest release is a fearless plunge into instinct over perfection. You can feel the adrenaline of committing to emotion rather than sanding down the edges. The result is an album that thrums with presence, and capture that exact moment spirit becomes sound.

Braun has always been a shapeshifter across genres, but here she sounds freer, more direct, and unburdened by second-guessing. You feel it immediately in the title-track, a moving tribute shaped from late-in-life conversations with her birth father. Instead of leaning into sentimentality, she lets the stillness do the talking. Her voice carries both the weight of loss and the quiet gratitude of connection finally found.

'Just One Night' moves with the kind of aching warmth that only hindsight can give, delivering something slow-burning, spacious, and dusted in sadness that somehow feels soft around the edges. 'Bolts From The Blue' shifts the mood entirely, spinning self-reflection into something wry and resilient. And 'East Van Crossing' is pure hometown magic, offering an open-armed ode to place, memory, and the geography that lives under our skin.

The band assembled around her play with the loose precision of seasoned players leaning fully into trust. While Sheldon Zaharko’s engineering at The Warehouse captures every breath of it.

The album’s back half adds three additional tracks from producer Adam Popowitz, expanding the emotional palette. 'Eye of the Hurricane', inspired by a surreal text exchange in the middle of a storm’s calm centre, is particularly striking, capturing a sound that is cinematic, unsettling, and strangely comforting.

What truly binds this record is a quiet courage. Norine Braun uses immediacy as a compass. She lets fragility stand without disguising it. And leans into the belief that sometimes the truest version of a song arrives before we’ve had the chance to tame it.

'A Hero In the Wind' is a rare instance of catching an artist exactly in the moment of being moved. It’s intimate, soulful, and guided by instinct rather than armour.