Breezy Detroit rockers Bonny Doon, who will release their second full-length, Longwave, on March 23rd, make the sort of effortless, lo-fi indie that both you and your dad can love.
For their second full-length (and debut on Woodsist Records), the Detroit folk-rock quartet stopped thinking too much and just went to the beach instead. Last month, we dug their earnest “A Lotta Things” single, and now they’re sharing a pastoral new video for their record’s title track. When Bonny Doon began sketching out a strategy to follow up their self-titled debut, they knew they wanted to do things differently. “I think everything’s always a reaction to how you did it the last time and what’s exciting you at the moment,” says Bobby Colombo, who splits vocal and guitar duties in the band with Bill Lennox. While their first record was a strong arrival, Colombo and Lennox characterize its creation as long and arduous. So the band snuck away from their native Detroit and rented a house on the beach in Northern Michigan, recording their next album in just five days, aiming for a looser, more instinct-driven process. “We were just thinking, ‘First thought, best thought’ with this one,” Colombo explains.
The result is Longwave, an album Bonny Doon might still have made if they weren’t holed up on a beach house, but probably not. Delicate and contemplative, the ten new songs feel very much like a product of their recording process—while Bonny Doon weren’t necessarily intent on tearing up the playbook, this record is still a totally different beast from its predecessor. Longwave embraces the stylings of Bonny Doon folk rock with some alt-country sprinklings but the band’s more spontaneous approach lends it a scrappiness that feels fresh. Rather than rein these songs in to the point of suffocation, the band allows them to breathe, rambling and untangling themselves in unexpected ways.
The homemade, found-footage vibe of “Long Wave” is rustic, charming, and the perfect visual accompaniment for the track’s calming influence. BRB, finding a hilltop in nature to roll down this weekend. in fact, Bonny Doon sound like they’re gunning to be spiritual successors to Silver Jews and Neil Young, with a pinch of Summerteeth-era Wilco thrown in. It’s because of this mood that the record never comes across as overly self-serious. The title track, which opens the album, ends in a knowing refrain, zen-like in its conviction: “You are who you’re supposed to be.” It’s delivered with the confidence of a band that believes it, and is comfortable enough in their skin to act accordingly.
The paradigm of live music is so old and stagnant, Colombo laments. “We’re interested in and would like to figure out ways to push us further… We have sort of an unhinged live show sometimes. We play the songs almost like they’re falling apart, but they never really do.” Bonny Doon’s Longwave is out March 23 via Woodsist.
The Band:
Bobby Colombo (guitar/vocals), Bill Lennox (guitar/vocals), Joshua Brooks (bass), and Jake Kmiecik (drums)
Bonny Doon’s Longwave is out March 23rd via Woodsist Records.
Arriving in the early months of 2017, Bonny Doon’s self-titled debut was a warm introduction to the Detroit quartet for many. Hazy and bright, the album’s woozy melodies and swirling webs of summery guitar textures were easily ingested as low-key slacker pop, blissfully awash in lo-fi sensibilities and dreamy ambiance. But the nonchalant breeziness belied a serious attention to songcraft that beckoned careful listening, and hinted at depths yet unexplored. Lo and behold, before the ink was even dry on the first record, work had already begun on its follow-up “Longwave,” a conscious about-face from the sonic experimentation of the first album, and a journey inward.
Opting for spontaneity and simplicity over the exploration of layers and textures that defined the first record, the band architected an incredibly intimate sound for these new songs. The album was tracked with minimal overdubs or production flourishes, constructing a frame that is spare and understated. The songs on Longwave amble through moonlit fields of melancholy guitar leads and self-reflection, the collection unfolding almost as one uninterrupted conversation with self. The session aimed to capture the band at their essence. With the superfluous stripped away, a gentle but steadfast spiritual core is revealed as the backbone of Bonny Doon’s cosmic American music
I really enjoyed Stef Chura’s excellent debut, “Messes”, last year. Actually, I’m still enjoying it this year as well. She’s currently hard at work on its follow-up, That album is still a ways off, but the duo are giving us a taste of their collaboration with a new limited edition 7-inch for Record Store Day. The A-side is “Degrees,” a contemplative song that flares up into an epic classic-rock rave-up when the chorus hits. Car Seat HeadrestWill Toledo produces and plays guitar, bass, and organ, we’re excited to announce the RSD exclusive 7-inch by Stef Chura, Degrees b/w Sour Honey . “Degrees” and “Sour Honey” were both songs cut from Messes , but revived when Stef crossed paths with Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest and a collaboration was born. Stef says:
“I met Will Toledo in 2016 when we did some touring together with Car Seat Headrest. We chatted at the Empty Bottle in Chicago at our first show and he told me that he found my music on Tumblr via an article that compared us to each other. He invited us on a couple of tours that year before Messes was out and before we had a label or booking agent or release plans or any “stuff.” In May of 2017 we ran into each other again at the Empty Bottle. Will was mixing Twin Fantasy and came out to our gig there with the engineer he’d been working with. He invited us to the studio to check out the record the next day. When we stopped by Will had finished mixing early and asked us if we had anything going on recording-wise. I said I have a couple of songs that got cut from Messes I want to record for a 7-inch and he was like “Cool, wanna record them right now? I’ll play bass.”
Greta Van Fleet is an American rock band formed in 2012. The band members are Josh Kiszka, Jake Kiszka, Sam Kiszka, and Danny Wagner. They were signed to Lava Records in March 2017 and in April the band released their debut studio Black Smoke Rising EP. The debut single, “Highway Tune”, topped the American harts last year.
A second EP From the Fires, containing the four songs from Black Smoke Rising and four new songs, was released on November 10th, 2017, alongside a second single, “Safari Song”. The band’s heavy rock sound is strongly influenced by the work of Led Zeppelin, with lead vocalist Josh Kiszka having a voice that has been compared to Robert Plant’s .
Their debut EP titled Black Smoke Rising was released April 2017. It’s is planned to be the first of three EP’s that will make an album when all released. They started touring in May 2017 to promote the EP with the UK band The Struts.In addition to the four tracks from Black Smoke Rising, A new double EP From the Fires features the new recordings “Edge of Darkness” and “Talk on the Street”, as well as covers of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and Fairport Convention’s “Meet on the Ledge”. The four new tracks were recorded in September 2017 at Rust Belt Studios in Detroit . The second single, “Safari Song”, was also released.
The Band
Josh Kiszka – lead vocals (2012–present)
Jake Kiszka – lead guitar (2012–present)
Sam Kiszka – bass guitar, keyboards (2012–present)
Bonny Doon leaped into the conscious of many early last year, with the release of their subtle and beautiful debut album. The Michigan quartet impressed with their hazy melodies and sonic exploration, yet they were already thinking about what would be next. The answer will come next month, with the release of their second album, “Longwave”, described the band as, “a conscious about-face…and a journey inward”.
This week Bonny Doon have shared the second snapshot of Longwave, in the shape of new single A Lotta Things. The track showcases the band’s change of musical direction, gone are the rich sonic textures, and to the fore is letting the songwriting speak for itself. The track is a stripped back, and subtle affair, just entwined guitar-lines, a steady pulsing drum beat and an unprocessed, gorgeously honest vocal line. There’s a touch of Ultimate Painting to the shuffling churn of the guitar lines, while the vocal has all the easy charm of A. Savage or Kevin Morby. It’s a brave move to follow a successful debut by ripping up the rule book and creating something entirely different, yet by the sound of this Bonny Doon were absolutely right to do so.
Longwave, improves on the homespun charm that made their debut so inviting. The leap is partially due to the fact that the band is more confident now as their debut’s songs were just the first songs Lennox ever wrote, but as Lennox explains it also comes from a more cohesive vision. He says, “The whole goal of this new album was to try and capture the band’s sound at its essence with everything stripped down and vulnerable. We were trying to just capture the sound of the band in a room. We were happy to just kind of bear more of ourselves and be more open.”
Written of over the course of a trip to a lake house in Northern Michigan, and recorded at Key Club Studios downstate, the mesmerizing songs on Longwaveare patient enough to ruminate on a musical idea without meandering. It’s this lack of urgency that has given the band the lyrical space to perfectly capture twenty-something malaise. Though the previously shared single “I Am Here (I Am Alive)” found Lennox frustrated, “Is there something missing I can’t tell / Is there more I can’t see,” Bonny Doon’s latest, “A Lotta Things,”.
Anna Burch is an anxious person,. the former Frontier Ruckus and Failed Flowers member sounds overwhelmed by everything that goes into releasing a solo album. Aside from writing every song on Quit the Curse, the singer/songwriter also handles the business side of the project.
“Every time I open my socials I’m so overwhelmed by how many notifications there are,” she says with a nervous laugh. “It’s been a little source of anxiety, for sure.” When it comes to the record itself, though, Burch was not by herself. With the help of producer Paul Cherry and engineer Collin Dupuis, along with numerous studio musicians, she was backed by a strong team. But the album is still hers, and for a woman who’s used to putting out records with bands, it’s a little intimidating.
“I’m feeling more vulnerable,” she admits. “[Quit the Curse is] under my name and my words and choices are being scrutinized—even though, of course, it was a collaborative effort. Other people helped make the record and played on the record, but it’s still under my name and any criticism is going to be completely directed at me.”
Fortunately, the album’s initial responses have been nothing but positive, and for that Burch is thankful. “I’m really overwhelmed by all the positive responses,” she says humbly. “It’s more than I expected—it feels great.”
That feeling is more than deserved; Burch’s musical journey has been a long one. From becoming a touring musician at the age of eighteen to getting burnt out and quitting music altogether to focus on grad school, her adult life has been a whirlwind. She’s dealt with toxic relationships, family drama, and substance abuse, and moved forward from it all. And despite being relatively new to the world of writing her own music, the Detroiter is pretty damn good at creating what she likes to call “bummer pop”—music that juxtaposes buoyant instrumentation with heavy subject matter.
“Thinking about writing those songs in a very melancholic, singer/songwriter way doesn’t seem cathartic or helpful to me,” she explains. “I wanted to make music that made me happy and that I would want to listen to.”
Seeing Alvvays for the first time, without knowing anything about the band, also helped Burch realize the direction she wanted to take her music. “I was pretty blown away,” she gushes. “And I think seeing that kind of band—electric guitars, drums, vocals—it struck me very deeply. So I was kind of like, ‘Yeah, I think I want a pop rock band backing up [my] songs.’ It was so elating, but also very emotional.”
Writing about hard times is also a therapeutic exercise for Burch. “I try to dig back into what I was feeling, and it kind of feels like there’s this weird split mentally,” she recalls. “It’s hard to tap back into that stuff in some ways, and critically think about the emotions and writing process.” And when she hits the stage, she feels that release even more. “It’s still fun performing [the songs],” she says. “I feel like I’m able to emote properly onstage without getting lost in this reverie of being overwhelmed by emotions. I think writing the songs really did the work of helping step back and be able to look in from almost an outsider’s perspective.”
Since the move to Detroit, Burch has put the past behind her. After a “messy” adjustment period, her life has slowed down a bit. “I stay in a lot—I have a steady partner that I’ve been with for three years,” she says, with a sense of peace. “Things are very different.”
So what will the future bring for Anna Burch? “I’m hoping to tour this record really hard and then get to a point where I can make the best record I can the next time around,”she says—and it’s easy to cheer her on.
Spartan Records proudly welcomes Man Mountain to the family , they are a melodic, instrumental post-rock outfit from Southeast Michigan. In the honorable lineage of bands like The Appleseed Cast, Sigur Ros, and American Football, Man Mountain’s debut record Infinity Mirror is a journey of emotive dynamics set against a swirling dreamlike ferocity. Song by song, the album progresses with an intentionality that allows delicate melodies, motifs, and nuances to build into quaking full-band aggression. Thematically, the album presents a constant duality. Aptly titled Infinity Mirror, it is hard to ignore the unending and cycling conflict associated with any type of prolonged reflection. Sonically translated, this pondering plays as understated notes and moments reverberating into upheaval and dissonance
Stef Chura’s debut studio album, Messes, is born of her years of experience playing around the Michigan underground clubs, setting up DIY shows in the area, and moving around the state—nearly 20 times. “Right when it starts to feel like home/It’s time to go,” she sings literally on its opening cut, ‘Slow Motion’, a twisty, dim-lit guitar pop song where she curls and stretches every word. There are worlds of emotion in the ways Chura pronounces phrases with twang and grit, alternatingly full of despair, playfulness, and abandon. Chura calls her music “emotional collage,” eschewing start-to-finish storylines in favour of writing intuitively about feelings, drawing from experiences and references related to a certain sentiment.
Originally from Alpena, Michigan, Chura moved to the Ypsilanti area in 2009, where she began playing shows before ultimately then moving to Detroit in 2012. Chura has been home-recording and self-releasing her songs for six years, playing bass in friends’ bands as well. With a trove of demos and 4-track home recordings, some of which she’d released on small runs of cassettes over the years, Chura says she wasn’t sure what to do with her life before heading into the studio. “One of my best friends passed away and I thought, what do I have to do before I die? I have to at least make one record.”
She recorded the entire album with Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good To Me) throughout 2015. Thomas plays bass on most of the record, and a bit of guitar and drums. Drummer Ryan Clancy of Jamaican Queens and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. adds the bulk of the drums. Through intricate guitar work and warm, textured production, Messes finds her trying to make sense of life’s ups and downs. “It’s about emotional mess, not physical mess,” Chura says. “The title track is about knowing that you are going to do something the wrong way, but you’re doing it anyway because you want that experience. I’ve had to do a lot of things the wrong way in order to figure out how to live my life.”
Listening to Bonny Doon’s self titled debut album “Bonny Doon”feels like something akin to sitting on a porch swing in the heat of the summertime, watching your neighbours strike up the barbecue, as the late-night sun sets behind houses. Or something like that. What I’m saying is that it’s a good time. Ambling, tender, weird, nice, real listen.
The band Bill Lennox, Bobby Colombo, Joshua Brooks, and Jake Kmiecik took some time to put together a track-by-track of the record, which is out via Spunk Records.
1. “Relieved”
Bill: Wasn’t sure if this one was just a humdrum strummer when I wrote it but I remember playing it for my friend while she was on LSD before I ever brought it to the band. She has the best taste in music so when she said she liked it I was pretty stoked. At the time I was living with people who collected lava lamps so I turned them all on and turned all the other lights off in the house and we listened to Slowdive most of the night. Hopefully that neon glow comes through in the album version.
Jake: The lyrics of this song and the warmth of the instrumentation always make me think fondly of the way time passes and the friendships this band has formed, and how there’s beauty and comfort in that.
2. “Summertime Friends”
Josh: This is a song that we’ve played five or more different ways, and recorded three times now. It’s been an up-tempo punk jam, it’s been really sparse, stoned and warped with everything being run through an echoplex, and here we do it in pretty straight forward style and just try to have fun with it. I think it was one the last songs we tracked for this record. Our friend Fred Thomas, who engineered a lot of the record, plays drums on it and Jake slid over to piano. It had previously appeared on a tape with a slow and dreamy quality, but Fred suggested we try it like this and we did it a few times and that was it. It has kind of a gang vocal quality because we just did them live in the room.
3. “What Time Is It in Portland?”
Bobby: A hokey question as a starting point for a spiraling ramble about change, this song seems kind of indulgent upon reflection. And maybe also because it frames it like something that happens all around me while I comfortably play the role of static observer. That’s not really how change works, but it can feel that way and it’s tempting to cast it like that. I am really happy with how this version came together. I wrote it before we started the band and it was one of the songs we tried out when Bill convinced me that I should also sing. Originally he was the only singer. We always called the guitar breaks Jimmy Buffett leads, though I don’t know his music well enough to know if that’s apt or wishful thinking.
4. “Lost My Way”
Bill: We all played in punk bands before we started this band so a large part of how we approach music is informed by that. We still kind of consider ourselves a punk band in many ways and this song is an example of how it is hard to let that go. One time we got too stoned and decided we’d play it half speed at a show, not sure how it was received. I really love the extended jam at the end. We play it different every time now but I’m happy with the way this version was captured. We were listening to a lot of krautrock at the time and Bobby and I saw Faust play around the time we recorded this. The singer kept reprimanding the audience for looking at their phones while they were playing and they had a guy playing a giant oil can as a drum pretty much the whole set. It was great.
5. “I See You”
Bill: This song was a roadmap for us in a lot of ways in that it helped us begin to find our voice. It was the first real song I ever wrote and when we played it together it just felt natural and like we all understood the feel and vibe of it. It was the first song we played at our first show. It’s on our first 7″ and it’s the first single on this record.
6. “(you can’t hide)”
Bobby: A lot of songs on this record were approached and recorded multiple different ways, and this is just a fragment of a different arrangement of “You Can’t Hide,” as captured by a blown out room mic. There is maybe a strange logic to including unfinished instrumentals filtered through clipping room mics when we had so many songs to choose from (we probably recorded about 25 for this record), but I think of them as little windows into the process and I think there’s beauty in those moments of unpolished spontaneity.
Josh:Bobby and I spent countless hours processing things through an echoplex on this record. That tape echo was a huge part of our sound and process for experimenting with songs during tracking and mixing. This one has the echoplex oscillating wildly over the whole track, as well as processing both guitars and the drums. A lot of things we do maybe don’t make the most sense but we are all about trying to get emotional impact out of our songs, however that happens.
8. “Never Been to California”
Jake: This song, at least at the time of writing and recording, felt very reflective of Bill’s songwriting process. It deals a lot with a sense of place and ruminations on where one resides, both physically and spiritually. The “blue bridge” mentioned in the first verse is a reference to the Ambassador Bridge which can be seen from the house Bill and I lived in at the time. It connects Detroit and Windsor, Canada. This song was also an exercise in a more country-esque side of our sound, a taste that brought the four of us together in a unique way.
9. “Maine Vision”
Josh: This one came as a vision in Maine, while we were standing on a rock overlooking an inland bay of the Atlantic. The melody just popped in Bill’s head and he started going “neh-neh neh-neh neh-neh neh-neh neh-neh neh neh-neh-neh” so we went back to the cottage we were staying in and jammed it out. We had just finished our first tour and drove from NYC up to outside of Portland to meet up with Bobby’s brother and relax in Maine for a few days. We are always trying to make Bonny Doon as sustainable as possible for our lives and mental health, and band retreats to cabins in beautiful places is a big part of that. There was a heavy kraut influence on this one, the one-minute track on the record was cut from an eleven-minute jam.
10. “Evening All Day Long”
Bill: I like the way this song rolls along and I love bobby’s guitar playing at the end, it’s bouncy and playful and has a sense of humor that I dig. Neither of us consider ourselves “good” guitar players but I think we’re both big fans of each other’s playing. The guitar mirrors Bobby’s lyrics too, there are jokes with a sort of existential campiness tossed in there to lighten up what could just be a straightforward sad song.
11. “(crowded)”
Josh: A longwave instrumental. There is a lot left out in the mix of this one, like all the words for one thing. It’s one of those songs that we kept adding to and adding to try and get it to feel right, and then ended up stripping everything away and just using the instrumental. It’s actually just the mic on Bill’s guitar amp and all the other instruments bleed through it. Bobby ran it through an old chorus pedal to give it a little extra movement. There’s a series of Velvet Underground bootlegs called the Guitar Amp Tapes, which are just a tape recorded in the back of Lou Reed’s amp. I could listen to those all day, they just have the feeling.
Detroit’sBonny Doon delivered one of last year’s most delightfully surprising debut albums early last year with the self-titled record. The band members cut their teeth playing in bands like TYVEK and Growing Pains, bands known for their rugged sound – but Bonny Doon shuffled out of that scene with a much more laid back heart-on-their-sleeves melodicism in the mold of Wilco or Ryan Adams.
The band’s Bill Lennox told us that Bonny Doon had already recorded their second album , captured in the beautiful Key Club on Lake Michigan. Today they have officially revealed details of the album, which is called Longwave, and will be coming out through their new label, Woodsist Records, on 23rd March.
As a glimpse of what’s to come on Longwave, Bonny Doon have released the song ‘I Am Here (I Am Alive)’. It continues in the same, instantly amiable tone that was so winning on the debut Bonny Doon, but over the course of its five minutes it shows off a more patient and meditative songwriting sensibility. It’s a definite broadening of their sound, which suggests that Longwave is going to be an involving and compelling listen.
Well, I'm dyslexic so writing about something I love: Music, might help but it's most likely just full of mistakes. That title is also lyrics from The Drones song called I Don't Want To Change. Oh, my name is William and thanks for having a look.
