Years ago, In the evening when her parents were asleep, a
teenaged Haley Bonar (stop snickering—it rhymes with honor) would
softly tiptoe out the door and quietly disappear into the thick
darkness of the South Dakota night. While there are far more dangerous
late-night destinations than the lulling predictability of the
Midwestern plains, Bonar kept these pilgrimages a secret. So much so
that when explaining her curfew-violating past over the
phone—while visiting her mother’s home back in the inaccurately
named Rapid City, South Dakota—Bonar’s voice grows cautiously
quiet, as if, after all these years, she might be overheard and
retroactively punished.
“In high school I had a radio show at the college station from
midnight to 3 am on Saturdays,” explains the singer, before admitting
the real reason for her slightly hushed tone. “My parents never knew
about it.” Fueled by a Dewzer (“a 40 ouncer of Mountain Dew we bought
at the gas station”), Bonar and a friend would take turns broadcasting
“punk and folk” songs deep into the night’s airwaves. It was
then—in this unfortunate timeslot and armed with the wealth of a
college radio station’s catalog of records—that the allure of
independent music took root within the teenager.
For Bonar, this was not a casual interest but a lifelong obsession.
These were the same sort of roots that convince you to drop out of
college (she did), catch the attention of Low’s Chairkickers imprint
(they released her debut album), conquer the Minnesota music scene
while touring the globe (this came next), and finally pull up stakes,
leave your backing band in the dust, and relocate to Portland (she just
did this).
If you’ve ever witnessed a Land of 10,000 Lakes winter, Bonar’s move
west is self-explanatory, as she explains with a Midwest accent that is
(thankfully) more Marge Gunderson than Sarah Palin. “I’ve lived in
Minnesota for eight years, and I was just sick of the winter and ready
to move somewhere new.” In tow with Bonar is Big Star, her
marvelous 2008 record that’s often credited with dragging her from the
role of talented Midwest gem to that of nationally respected
artist.
Bookended by a pair of songs about boys—the sleepy-eyed “Green
Eyed Boy” opens the album, while the lonesome “Tiger Boy” closes things
out—Big Star works with both the revisionist rural country
of Lucinda Williams and the wounded, forgotten folk of Karen Dalton. In
“Better Half,” Bonar tackles the less-than-graceful art of aging in
rock culture (“What happened to you?/You used to be punk”); then
there’s the tempered grace of the Aimee Mann-influenced “Arms of Harm,”
and the resonating title track. Bonar’s lovely voice is the centerpiece
of Big Star, with a warm and hearty delivery that’s as welcoming
as a heroic slice of Americana apple pie left to cool on the sill.
Bonar is currently trotting out new material (the sprawling beauty
of the unreleased “Anyway, Rattlesnake” might be her best song to date)
while working on writing the body of a full-length that will have the
unenviable task of following Big Star. And then there’s that
whole trying to find footing in a new city thing. “I’m just kind of
feeling it out right now,” she explains. “It’s good to write in a new
environment, so that’s my goal.”