“Something Great“
from the album Big Star
2008
iTunes
Sure, if St. Paul chanteuse Haley Bonar’s latest release Big Star was playing overhead in your neighborhood coffee shop, you probably wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Fair enough. The greatest tragedy about quality coffee shop music is that it isn’t meant to be homogenized into a low volume playlist just pleasant enough to keep customers calm and content. The best of this genre chock full of gentle guitars and down-to-earth vocals is meant for a truly intimate setting a public meeting place can never offer — one where the words can be heard and contemplated, where the strumming can be felt and absorbed. Haley Bonar’s Big Star is a shimmering bright spot too good for the coffee shop world.
Although the 25-year-old Bonar’s fourth album offers similar instrumentation and the same inimitable croon as its predecessor, there’s a newfound directness at play in the songwriting. Earlier Bonar tunes often stretched out like never ending mountain ranges, while Big Star‘s tracks crackle like small bushfires: warm and contained, but still shrouded in darkness and mystery. Bonar’s artistic growth is evident throughout, particularly in the lyric department, focusing on some heftier themes such as celebrity (“Queen of Everything”) and the relationship difficulties that come with that territory (“Something Great”). Tracks like “Bag” show Bonar can still approach minimalist imagery with just as much efficacy.
With famed producer Tchad Blake (Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello, Pearl Jam) working the mixing board for the album, it’s no surprising that Bonar’s sonic territory feels tweaked as well. Blake wisely doesn’t smother Bonar’s tunes in grand string arrangements or wall-of-sound production values, instead preserving the open and airy quality of the source material. Bill Mike’s electric guitars meekly swell up behind Bonar’s acoustic chord progressions on the album’s prophetic title track and elsewhere snare and cymbal hits bound and spring radiantly underneath the mellotron on “Arms of Harm.” Even Bonar’s flirtations with straight-ahead country (“Highway 16”) and her slowcore past (“Along”) sound rich despite only a limited amount of vocal and guitar layering. Big Star‘s slightly revised approach to lyrics and production could easily make Bonar a star. Just promise not to let her gorgeous songs drown in Starbucks boredom.