Why Bonnie Depart Toward Love
We spoke with Blair Howerton in an exclusive profile upon the announcement of her band’s sophomore LP, Wish on the Bone. Watch the visualizer for “Fake Out” below.
When you’re as influenced by Sheryl Crow and the Chicks as you are a “pop girly, through and through,” you’re bound to build a catalog that covers every base. For Blair Howerton and her band Why Bonnie, their second LP, Wish on the Bone, is the explosive, vivid sibling to their 2022 debut, 90 in November. Trading their cozy, minimalist twang in for a new wardrobe of electronica, kiss-off distortion, guitar-pop catchiness and bold, uncategorical post-rock. On their debut album, 90 in November, Why Bonnie (Howerton, Sam Houdek, Kendall Powell, Chance Williams and Josh Malett), followed their instincts and aimed for restraint. On Wish on the Bone, Howerton, Williams and Malett brought their individual flair and backgrounds to the sounds and threw “shit at the wall and hop[ed] it stuck.” “And a lot of it did, for us,” Howerton says. “We’re hoping that people like that. We wanted to go big or go home. We wanted to make something bold and adventurous and push the limit.”
Howerton started writing some of the tracks that would encompass Wish on the Bone while the band was still mid-cycle for 90 in November. “I think people are shocked to hear that artists do that,” she admits. “But, for me, I don’t really set out to write one cohesive album at a time. I’m constantly writing.” Release schedules and rollouts take a while, and Howerton refuses to put her creative life on pause for the sake of remaining fully in-service to one project at any given time. “I don’t have a very good practice going, so I sit and write when the mood strikes and whatever comes out, comes out. I like to keep the ball rolling, however it feels natural, and then, after a couple of songs, let those guide me in the direction of what the next album will be,” Howerton continues. The first song she wrote that made the final Wish on the Bone tracklist is its closer, “I Took the Shot,” a two-minute finale that is the verbatim, original demo that Howerton made in 2020, before 90 in November was finished.
“With 90 in November, I had been writing songs in peak pandemic, without a band, on an acoustic guitar and really getting back to my roots of all these really great Americana, raw ‘90s sounds that I had grown up with,” Howerton explains. “I was like, ‘This is a part of me I really want to be able to express.’ With Wish on the Bone, it was also another facet of myself, of my personality. Sometimes I feel like I just want to get back home and listen to the raw sounds that I was raised with, and then this album feels a bit more like my journey of growing up in the current space [of my life]—might be a little more polished, a little more adventurous. It was fun to play around with that side of myself, because I hadn’t really gotten to do that on the last album.”
There are still country elements on Wish on the Bone. “Three Big Moons” is a post-COVID, bar-band lament packed with a crying fiddle, as Howerton sings about “coming up on a year in my own little world, I’m the king here and the prettiest girl.” On “Headlight Sun,” she plays up the meta of her own elemental pursuits: “Like a poetic line in a standard country song, I thought that something I could give you could be something you could keep,” she sings. But what Wish on the Bone executes more than anything is furthering the band’s penchant for massive hooks. If 90 in November was a perfect soundtrack for road trips, then Wish on the Bone is an apt companion mix for summer nights in big venues. “I’m a sucker for a good hook,” Howerton nods. “I don’t want to release something unless I feel like it would make me sing along to it, too.” And thus, tracks like “Dotted Line,” “Fake Out,” “Headlight Sun” and “All the Money” are hued with epic, earwormy distortion (the guitar on “All the Money” is so toe-curling it’ll break your ankles) and shoegazing colossus, while slower, more brick-and-mortar ballasts get moored in-between, like “Rhyme or Reason,” “Green Things” and “Weather Song.”
Wish on the Bone is the second album Why Bonnie have made with Jonathan Schenke, who co-produced 90 in November alongside Howerton. Schenke has made a name for himself over the last decade-and-change, doing engineering, mixing and production on albums like Parquet Courts’ Light Up Gold, Snail Mail’s Lush, the Drums’ Abysmal Thoughts and Kenneth Anger’s Constant Smiles. And while Light Up Gold is likely his most well-known work, his collaborative efforts with pop musicians and minimal singer-songwriters make for a perfect resumé for a songwriter and instrumentalist like Howerton. “It’s cool to look back on his works and feel comfortable that he knows how to develop different sounds and that he has those techniques,” she adds, “because I have an internal ear of how I want something to sound, but he finishes the sentence for me in a way that feels really natural and cohesive. He is always down to try stuff out, and it’s a really good environment to work in—because I’m not having to second-guess myself. He builds me up as a songwriter and as a producer.”
Though painting visceral pictures with imagery in her lyrics is a non-negotiable, ever-crucial task for Howerton (“Took a swan dive into nothing, 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” is a grand slam), because she pushes herself “to write songs that will, ultimately, really make people feel something deeply,” her compass is directed by the unearthliness of song in its most holistic form. “Music itself is a form of communication that is just magical beyond any kind of reality that we can understand,” Howerton says. “I don’t try to worry too much about the future or about things that I can’t control, because I want to focus on the things that matter—and that’s love, equality and making sure that people are feeling taken care of, because everybody deserves that.”
Wish on the Bone is the second album Why Bonnie have made with Jonathan Schenke, who co-produced 90 in November alongside Howerton. Schenke has made a name for himself over the last decade-and-change, doing engineering, mixing and production on albums like Parquet Courts’ Light Up Gold, Snail Mail’s Lush, the Drums’ Abysmal Thoughts and Kenneth Anger’s Constant Smiles. And while Light Up Gold is likely his most well-known work, his collaborative efforts with pop musicians and minimal singer-songwriters make for a perfect resumé for a songwriter and instrumentalist like Howerton. “It’s cool to look back on his works and feel comfortable that he knows how to develop different sounds and that he has those techniques,” she adds, “because I have an internal ear of how I want something to sound, but he finishes the sentence for me in a way that feels really natural and cohesive. He is always down to try stuff out, and it’s a really good environment to work in—because I’m not having to second-guess myself. He builds me up as a songwriter and as a producer.”
Though painting visceral pictures with imagery in her lyrics is a non-negotiable, ever-crucial task for Howerton (“Took a swan dive into nothing, 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” is a grand slam), because she pushes herself “to write songs that will, ultimately, really make people feel something deeply,” her compass is directed by the unearthliness of song in its most holistic form. “Music itself is a form of communication that is just magical beyond any kind of reality that we can understand,” Howerton says. “I don’t try to worry too much about the future or about things that I can’t control, because I want to focus on the things that matter—and that’s love, equality and making sure that people are feeling taken care of, because everybody deserves that.”
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