Bonny Doon

Bonny Doon

Blue Stage Session

Third Man

***Price Fix!!! Recorded live direct to acetate at the Blue Room at Third Man Records. Hailing from Detroit’s fertile music scene, BONNY DOON released their first songs into the world in 2015, followed by their well-received debut in 2017 and their more sparse, excellent second album Longwave in 2018. Bonny Doon’s music is founded upon an easy, ebbing groove overladen with dreamy texture, simultaneously serving assurance and inviting introspection. So, it’s no wonder they’ve been tapped by Waxahatchee to record and tour as the backing band supporting her new album this Spring. For their live set, they hand-picked six of their most universally lovable tracks, spanning their two full-lengths, unhurried and deliberate. They were joined for select tracks by local music scene buddies including TYVEK's SHELLS and FRED THOMAS. The album opens with the tight album single “I Am Here (I Am Alive)”, showing just how precisely the group can replicate their studio sound while sprinkling in cheerful improvisation. The third and final song on the A side, “I See You,”, finds Bonny Doon at their most lackadaisical, endearing and superrelatable, with lyrical depictions of life’s little and big, most profound and wonderfully ordinary. Especially in this time when comfort and consensus seem like rare commodities, Bonny Doon’s Blue Stage Sessions is a real gift.

Bonny Doon

Longwave

Woodsist

***BACK IN PRINT ON NEW RED VINYL!!!  Arriving in the early months of 2017, Bonny Doon’s self-titled debut was a warm introduction to the band 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. But the nonchalant breeziness belied a serious attention to songcraft, 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. In the spring of 2016 the band decamped to a remote part of Michigan, nesting near the evocatively named Mystic Lake, and spent a week uprooting former approaches and reinventing their sound anew. Moving into more improvisational territory, they wrote quickly and from the hip, using repetitive chord structures to aid in spontaneous generation. Attracted to the session’s spacious arrangements and unaffected sounds, they immediately went into the studio to capture the material. Working for the first time outside of home recording settings with engineer Bill Skibbe and longtime friend and collaborator Shelley Salant, the experience allowed for a focused concentration on bringing the intrinsic spirit of the group to the surface. 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...