Wish on the Bone

When Blair Howerton brought bandmates Chance Williams and Josh Malett together to work on Why Bonnie’s sophomore LP, the first song she showed them set the tone for what was to come. “Fake Out” is about “trying to be authentic in a world that makes it impossible to be so,” and fittingly, it’s the loudest song on Why Bonnie’s bold new album, Wish on the Bone. On the chorus, Howerton wails against a building wall of sound that overtakes her by the song’s end: “It’s not my face/ I imitate/ It’s not my face/ I imitate.”

The revelation has clouded Howerton’s mind in the two years since Why Bonnie released their debut, 90 in November, an album praised for its nostalgic depictions of wide-open spaces that earned comparisons to Waxahatchee and Wednesday. That album captured who Howerton felt like she was at the time – a twenty-something living in New York, yearning for the Texas of her adolescence through rose-colored glasses – but her self-conception is forever in flux. On Wish on the Bone, Why Bonnie is untethered from the particulars of landscape or genre, but a fixation on what it might look like to lead an authentic life grounds the record in place. “I’ve changed since that album, and I trust that I’ll probably continue to change,” Howerton says. “Maybe I won’t be the same person entirely two years from now.”

Curiously, that mercurial sense of personhood made Howerton trust herself more, both in personal relationships and in the studio. Though Howerton may change, her convictions are steadfast, as is her sense of moral responsibility. “These songs were written out of hope for a better future. I’m not naïve, the world is fucked up, but I think you can radically accept that while still believing it’s possible to change things,” Howerton says. “Hope, to me, is strength.” And to have it, one must develop a critical sensibility capable of subverting the charade of contemporary American existence. “Fake Out” puts it bluntly: “Something you thought/ Was only something that you heard.”

When Why Bonnie recorded 90 in November, they set out to make a country album, aligning their respective technical instincts with the genre trappings. With Wish on the Bone, Howerton had no interest in adhering to genre standards. Bands unbeholden to expectation like Broken Social Scene and HAIM were a guiding light as Howerton, Williams, and Malett fleshed out these songs with help from Jonathan Schenke, who co-produced alongside Howerton. “We were trying on musical hats,” Howerton says, laughing. “There’s still some country on this record, but I wasn’t thinking about sticking to one thing. Personal experience of learning to be bolder and more assertive and trusting myself has carried over into my music. I’m not afraid to take risks.” Howerton felt free enough to set one of these songs – the gorgeous, aching “Three Big Moons” – on a distant planet inspired, in part, by a sci-fi novel. “They pinned a note to my collar/ It said ‘we couldn’t save her’/ And dropped down the American Flag/ Like it was a favor,” Howerton sings. When she mentions Houston, it’s not only to reference her childhood home, but also NASA. “Houston, we have a problem/ So many that I just, I just can’t solve them.”

Lyrically, Wish on the Bone confronts issues both macro and micro in scale. “Dotted Line” was written when Howerton was experiencing “the weight of capitalism,” onset by a period when she was “broke as hell” and spiraling. “I was thinking of all the things we’re told are markers of success, and how at this rate, I’ll probably never have any of them.” To sign the “dotted line” in question is to make a Faustian bargain. “Good days ahead after you pay,” Howerton, or the devil, promises on the chorus, the backing beat as hypnotic as any hustler. It’s one of a handful of songs on Wish on the Bone that beckon the audience to scream along; how many of us have made deals like the one Howerton describes, only to come up short? “I should have known better,” we rage at ourselves, accompanied by Howerton, our infectiously confident guide into this netherworld.

A song like “Dotted Line” is written as a rallying cry, a defiant kiss off directed at the forces that be who, Howerton says, “are just turning the wheel.” But other songs on Wish on the Bone have an intimate edge, convincing the listener that Howerton is beckoning them into a private room, allowing them to witness a defining moment. On “I Took the Shot,” Howerton’s sun-bleached voice recounts the dissolution of a relationship over a bed of twinkling synths. “I waited at our old bar/ But you never showed/ So I took the shot I bought you/ And one more for the road.” It’s a cinematic ending to the album, like the final shot in a coming of age film in which the protagonist rejects the forces that have tried, and failed, to shape her into something other than herself. It leaves you with a hard-fought sense of hope, which is among Howerton’s greatest gifts as a songwriter.

“You owe it to the people who are experiencing the worst to just keep pushing,” Howerton says. That commitment to regenerating a sense of hope each new day was ingrained in her when she lost her brother. It happened just as Howerton was beginning to come into her own as a musician, finding her voice amidst the DIY scene of Austin, TX. To cope, she wrote song after song, built a catalog despite her suffering, and in doing so, developed a new relationship to spirituality, one that she defines on Wish on the Bone’s stirring standout, “Rhyme or Reason.” On the bridge, Howerton warns of what it feels like to lose the warmth of love: it’s like Halley’s Comet, “it comes fast/ And you’ll miss it if you blink.” With Wish on the Bone, Howerton is wide-eyed and waiting, reminding herself, even on the worst days, that despair is not inevitable. “This album is about choosing hope, beauty, and love every day because nothing is worth it if you don’t believe in those things.”