[Quiet Energies] takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort.

We were lucky enough to ask Bonnetta a few questions about the record and his musical career, exploring his influences, plans for the future and listening habits. Enjoy.

Jon: Hi Jonas, thanks for chatting with us! How has life been treating you since the release of Quiet Energies?

Jonas: All is well! Been getting ready to tour the new record around Canada a little bit and have been working on a bunch of new projects.

The album saw a shift in tone, with many tracks more cathartic and upbeat (for want of a better term). Do you have a better time when playing these songs live? And do you think the changes set a trajectory for where Evening Hymns are headed in the future?

Well I haven’t toured them long enough to understand them live yet so that’s kind of nice. Our current live setup allows us to explore the songs more than in the past and so that’s been satisfying so far. I’m not a huge fan of touring a record for a long time though so talk to me in a year from now and we will see. I’ve been writing so much new stuff that I’m itching to just keep developing new material live. I don’t think the next record will sound like Quiet Energies though. I’ve been working on some piano music that’s more rooted in soul and R&B so who knows… haha…

In my review of Quiet Energies I mention how you retreated into the countryside at various points, and recorded the album in a rural home studio. Is this escape an important part of your creative process? Are we talking escape-the-city rural or cut-off-wilderness rural?

I just need to be left alone with my thoughts. It’s too easy for me to get distracted and so forcing myself into solitude is my solution to fighting writer’s block. It’s not so much as escape now as a way of life as I moved out here permanently. And it doesn’t feel so much as an escape but more of a homecoming. This is how I grew up and it’s what resonates with me.

What else do you consider as influences on your writing and sound? Are there any musicians/writers/artists you consider important in your development? I’ve seen Jaan Kaplinski’s name bandied about, although it wasn’t clear if it came from you or a reviewer.

Huge Kaplinski fan. I own everything that has been translated to English and even recently acquired some Estonian books of his from a friend. He’s been a large shadow on my work since the beginning almost.
Space and environment are crucial to my work. I always come back to trying to explain this project as less a songwriting project and more of trying to create spaces for people to exist in.
And I’ve really recently been truly inspired by art itself. Just recognizing that I’m very fortunate to make a living by conjuring up things from nothing. I feel very lucky.

Recent months have seen you take a crack at the silver screen, what with an Evening Hymns song in the latest Cameron Crowe film and your score for the documentary Strange and Familiar. How did these projects come about, and how does the experience of making a soundtrack compare to recording as Evening Hymns? Is it something you’d like to do more of?

Well the Crowe film came about cause he got into the last record Spectral Dusk and we became Twitter buddies and chatted a bit. Next thing you know I got an email from Sony requesting the song for an upcoming picture. It was a trip. Very cool and I’m super thankful for that. The doc I scored I’m equally excited about it. It’s about this charming little island off the coast of Newfoundland. The first trailer for that film was cut to my music by an editor friend and the directors really liked it and they reached out. I’m working on mixing that music to release it sometime in 2016. That kind of work really suits my lifestyle right now. I have a home studio that I’ve just added a second room on and so I can work quietly on my own out there. I’m hoping I get to do more score work.

You can buy Quiet Energies now from Outside Music (US/Can), Tin Angel Records (UK/EU) and Kütu Records (France).

The post Interview: Evening Hymns appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If you haven’t listened to Evening Hymns’ previous records, then you are seriously missing out. Spectral Dusk in particular is one of my all-time favourite albums, an introspective release centring on Bonnetta’s life and mentality in the aftermath of the death of his father. It was an album that came along at a good (or rather bad) time for me and doubtless many others. As I wrote in my preview post:

“I could go on about how Spectral Dusk is brave and heartbreaking and intensely personal, or how it made me feel okay and less alone, or how Evening Hymns, miles from home in a humble Cardiff venue, dredged everything up again to play a quite stunning and draining live set for our pleasure when it would have been easier not to, but I’m sure Bonnetta gets that all the time”.

Writing in such a visceral manner about something so important and intimate can prove a double-edged sword, especially for musicians who must perform the songs for the two or three intervening years in the recording cycle. While the candid lyrics might have proved therapeutic in the weeks and months devoured by the idea (and then reality) of losing his father, having to repeat the same words night after night to roomfuls of strangers must have been exhausting, not to mention becoming an unnatural complication to an already arduous grieving process (“It was never fun”, Bonnetta says of these tours). Furthmore, these songs saw him trying to deal with the grief of losing his father through the wonderful idea that the deceased live on in memories and thoughts and songs (see ‘Cedars’, ‘Cabin in the Burn’ etc.), yet it’s easy to see how such a concept can prevent any emotional progress, especially if the artist sees it as the primary purpose of their work (ie. stopping or changing focus would cause a loved one to slip away, leaving one person responsible).

With this in mind, Quiet Energies feels like a conscious attempt at forward motion. Opener ‘If I Were A Portal’ sounds immediately warmer and bigger, if not the warm spring to Spectral Dusk‘s cold lonely melancholy then at least a mild, [out of sync/seq?] autumn, where death seems less illogical and necessary for continuing life. The pain is still present, but here Bonnetta is at least considering ways to prevent it from overwhelming him: “Wish I was a portal, that I could open up a hole in to my body let it all pour out”. But rather than using distraction, or losing himself in something else, you get the sense he is instead working carefully to learn from his father, not in death but in life.

“Here comes the whispering woman,
there goes the wandering man
you built a house you could die in,
I only now understand.
It’s hard to see things clearly
I took ten steps in the night
I guess it’s best to keep moving
It’s all revealed in good time”

‘Evil Forces’ is a cathartic rock song about escaping pain through finding solitude, speaking of Bonnetta’s retreat into the wilderness of Canada in search of respite (it’s worth noting he recorded the album at his home studio in the Ontario countryside). “I’ll find those silent places… just me in the valley, keeping the secret”, he sings, as if serene open spaces can offer a kind of destructive interference against chaotic internal noise, damping the signal that has been playing over and over in his head. ‘House of Mirrors’ is probably the most upbeat I’ve ever heard Evening Hymns, with its peppy drumbeat adding to the sense of advancement. The song faces up to the worries related to grieving and moving on (“When I was older I thought the memories would rust, thought all the pictures of you would turn to dust”) but is ultimately about being freed by another, cut from the tangle of self-made fears by the simple wonder of human connection. “I spin around, I spin around, I spin around, trapped in a house of mirrors, you were all I feared and you released me”. This is continued on the atmospheric layers of ‘Rescue Teams’, a simple folk song enhanced with drums and ambient swells, a sonic version of the wild. Here Bonnetta is candid and vulnerable but something is different, his lyrics no longer inviting things in but instead letting them go, as if casting words into a wide open sky and allowing peace to fill the space that remains.

‘Oh Man You’ll Walk Again and Again’ deals with the aftermath of Spectral Dusk, the pitfalls of constant touring and the emotional dredging it required, starting with the idealistic purpose of the record (“I was tired of wandering at night in the fields specifically looking of you / I wanted to feel better put my pain into letters”) and descending into reality (“Drove for a year, sang my songs into beers and to be honest it never felt good”). The song feels almost like a Wooden Sky number, introspective heartfelt rock infused with a positive energy, as if sung from a new position of understanding, ending on an ambient interlude. This feeds into ‘Connect The Lines’, which has a piano opening with all the space of the natural world before being joined by elegiac strings and dramatic clattering percussion to form a stark pop ballad in which uncertainty smoulders beneath the surface: “Oh I want to know / will I connect the lines?” Following is ‘All My Life I Have Been Running’, possibly the most certain you will find Evening Hymns, the all-out driving rock song and advert for the new outlook. “I needed to write a ripper – a song with a Tom Petty bridge – about accepting who I am and how I perceive the world” Bonnetta said of the track.

‘Light As a Feather’ closes the album, with a gentle buzzing drone intro that slides slowly into a morose and spacious ambience, before the stoking of simple acoustic guitar and Bonetta’s vocals flare into vivid life. It follows the trend of the previous albums of having a sad slow song to finish, serving to not only reinforce the theme of retreating into the nature but letting us see the good that simplicity allowed, capturing the essence of the album in neat verse:

“Goodbye lover,
goodbye city,
I am going away.
I have wandered
I have wondered
there’s no reason to stay.

In the canyon
by the river
with my name carved in stone.
Found some solace
found some starlight
found the calm in my soul.

Walked the ridge line
felt the north wind
settled in for the year.
Missed my mother
lasted(?) to springtime
wished my woman was near.

Watched the sunrise,
sad reflecting
felt like I could not stay.
Light as a feather
I cut that tether
and I floated away”

Despite loss being the key theme, Quiet Energies sees a shift in focus. The album takes the suffocating, nebulous shadow of grieving and distils it into something small and hard and strangely tactile, a mysterious object that will always be there in your pocket, radiating its secret and peculiar brand of comfort. This isn’t about forgetting death, or even really ‘moving on’, instead its about coming to a deeper understanding of one’s life, about how a person can be so shaped by another, and how such an impact can and should be a source of immense pride and joy, no matter how hard some days can be. In other words, Quiet Energies is about understanding how it is in fact life, not death, which shapes us and our view of the world.

Quiet Energies is out now on Outside Music (North America) and Tin Angel Records (UK/EU). You can get it on vinyl here (N America) and here (UK), or on CD and download via the Bandcamp.

–

The post Evening Hymns – Quiet Energies appeared first on Various Small Flames.

If you aren’t familiar with Jonas Bonnetta’s  Evening Hymns, then you really should be. 2009’s Spirit Guides was a lesson in atmospheric, well-written folk music and 2012’s Spectral Dusk is, without exaggeration, one of my favourite records of the decade so far. We only managed this measly non-post at the time, but lets just say it dragged me through some stuff I needed dragging through. I could go on about how Spectral Dusk is brave and heartbreaking and intensely personal, or how it made me feel okay and less alone, or how Evening Hymns, miles from home in a humble Cardiff venue, dredged everything up again to play a quite stunning and draining live set for our pleasure when it would have been easier not too, but I’m sure Bonnetta gets that all the time.

Anyway, yesterday the band announced that their new album Quiet Energies is to be released on Outside Music on the 18th of September. To learn a bit more about it then you should read this interview with Sarah Murphy over at Exclaim, then watch the rather lovely trailer below:

Photograph from Outside Music

The post A New Album From Evening Hymns appeared first on Various Small Flames.

When I heard about the second release from Evening Hymns, I had high expectations. Since seeing them live (in a small room that could not have contained more than 30 people) and hearing Jonas Bonnetta’s honest and cynicism-free explanations of the songs, my expectations were surpassed. A beautiful spectacle (both lyrically and sonically), the record is something special, a swirling amalgam of highly personal grief and fond memories past that form an intricate mosaic of the relationship between family members. Desperation, sadness, panic, anger, a bitter despondency… all the emotions of bereavement are visited yet a triumphant sense of continuation is found.

I should go into the album in more detail and give it the write up it deserves but will leave it as this. Spectral Dusk has emerged as my favourite album of the year over the last few weeks and I very much doubt it will relinquish this position before the year is out. Not since Hospice has a collection of songs fitted together so well to synthesize such a vivid and affecting narrative.

Buy Spectral Dusk from Bandcamp or from their own shop. As a bonus, the duo have released a session to download. Grab it here to hear what you are missing.

Until next time…

The post Apologies… Evening Hymns appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The Wooden Sky will tour the UK (see below). Excitingly, they will be joined by fellow Canadians Evening Hymns, who are also on the verge of releasing a new album. Spectral Dusk is said to be influenced by the experiences of lead Jonas Bonnetta when losing his father in 2009. He has said that his aim was to create “11 moments of reflection or introversion.” Again, what I have heard of the album has got me excited; an atmospheric and visceral exploration of feeling and genuine pain. Getting excited about such a thing sounds a little strange but you get the drift. Stream a track below and watch (a personal favourite) ‘Asleep In The Pews’ at the bottom.

Both albums are shaping up to be some of my favourites this year so hopefully I will be able to write more detailed views on each album when the time comes. Until then, have a listen and try and catch them on tour. The UK dates are below and check here for more European dates.

• 03/10 – CARDIFF, Buffalo Bar
• 04/10 – LONDON, Windmill
• 05/10 – PRESTON, Mad Ferret
• 09/10 – LONDON, Slaughtered Lamb
• 10/10 – GLASGOW, Captain’s Rest
• 11/10 – HARTLEPOOL, The Studio
• 12/10 – SUNDERLAND, Independent
• 13/10 – OXFORD, Oxjam

The post The Wooden Sky & Evening Hymns appeared first on Various Small Flames.