Garrett La Bonte spent the best part of ten years playing in punk and hardcore outfits across Southern California, before starting his own project. Using the moniker La Bonte, he made a space for something more sedate and reflective, a counterpoint to the intensity of previous projects that allows patience a key role. Despite being a deeply personal project, the current iteration of La Bonte welcomes a series of other musicians too, with Evan Schaid (drums, percussion), Janey Riech (vocals), Brooke Dickson (vocals), Eric Shevrin (piano, synths), Jacob Maag (lapsteel), Ellen Schloff (violin) and Jake Ingalls (cello) all helping to craft the sound.
New album Don’t Let This Define Me will be released via Anxiety Blanket later this month, and the title track serves as the perfect introduction to the La Bonte sound. Namely, how it manages to offer such an unguarded and intimate tone while retaining a certain abstraction. Hurdling any danger of becoming sentimental and mawkish with sharp writing and implied meaning. Here we find a young person confused and guilty, feeling responsible for a world unravelling at the seams. Apocalyptic visions follow, and a Biblical song sung by his mother. Words full of portent and sublime glory. Loss in its keenest form.
But something else emerges from the torment. An empathetic tone only possible via vulnerability. As the track unfolds, a certain intensity unfurls. Forward motion as its own form of catharsis. So rather than become lost amid the grief and sadness, La Bonte finds a way to persevere, however hesitant or painful such progress might be. And, moreover, he holds out a hand so that we might walk too.
Don’t Let This Define Me is out on the 27th July via Anxiety Blanket and you can pre-order it now via the La Bonte Bandcamp page, with various vinyl variants including a special edition where all profits going to SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition and The Utah Pride Center.
