ALBUM REVIEW: Bonny Doon Makes Room for Unabashed Joy
Maeri Ferguson
Posted On June 15, 2023
There can be plenty of skepticism around joy, like it’s too pure, too earnest a feeling to be real. But when you give yourself over to it, as Detroit trio Bonny Doon seem to on their new album, the reward is worth it. Let There Be Music is the band’s third album and first since 2018, and much has unfolded since then. Notably, the group began a fruitful collaborative relationship with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, acting as the backing band for her acclaimed 2020 release Saint Cloud (Crutchfield returns the favor with backing vocals on this new set). But they also waded through the tumult of the pandemic, multiple illnesses, and the ensuing obstacles. But here, on the other side, they’ve clicked back into place with their best album yet.
Bonny Doon (photo by Trevor Naud)
At the heart of Let There Be Music is the friendship between singers Bill Lennox and Bobby Colombo and drummer Jake Kmiecik, which comes through in the ease of their arrangements. Lennox and Colombo trade off vocal duties like two longtime buddies in contemplative conversation about life’s ups and downs. The album is smooth-edged, but not overly polished; deliberate, but organic, and always with an eye toward the sunnier side of the street. Take a tune like “Maybe Today,” the album’s standout and a sonically golden centerpiece about hanging in there and trusting the process. Though it starts quietly, its chorus of “la la la la la las” breaks open like clouds parting for a giant rainbow.
The album’s jubilant title track is a bop of a reminder of taking the good with the bad. And “Naturally,” with its driving percussion, praises the benefits of letting the chips fall where they may, without force or intervention.
Despite how it sounds, there’s no toxic positivity to be found on Let There Be Music. It is as genuine as a blue sky, a beating heart, a warm hug. Bonny Doon’s clear-eyed songwriting and melodic instrumental mastery, including gently throttling guitars boosted by Michael Malis’ airy piano, is a salve and a promise of eventually reaching something sweeter.
Bonny Doon’s Let There Be Music is out June 16 on ANTI- Records.
