THE BONNEViLLES - Arrow Pierce My Heart

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The Bonnevilles new hit record, Arrow Pierce My Heart, starts with a haunting, lo-fi, acapella prayer called The Bells of Hell Go Ting-A-Ling-A-Ling, a WWI British airmen's song, and it segues into a mono fade to stereo bomb drop guitar tone that rocks like the sound of Howlin' Wolf's 1969 amplifier rolling off the top of his station wagon. No Law In Lurgan, is a monster garage super rock boogie that sets the tone for the album. The Bonnevilles have sent notice: They ain't fuckin' around.

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My Dark Heart is track two. A blues shouter you'll be blasting on a late afternoon flat-black motorcycle ride straight into the sun.

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Track three, The Whiskey Lingers tells it like it is, if you like your liquor amber. A deeply grooving blues, it shows they've absorbed some Tupelo rock, a little North Mississippi trance action, and throttled it all thru a Nirvana/Stooges filter...wholly unavoidable, like The Beatles filter, it's in the air and in the water. Hold on! Singer/songwriter/guitarist Andrew McGibbon shines incredibly bright on this slab of blues rock implosion. Plucking, swinging, rolling. tumbling, sliding, grinding, McGibbon sails here...the performance...like the rainbow in a great glass of Rye whiskey, is stellar.

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I don't know if The Electric Company is a metaphor for something or not. Maybe the dude in the song worked for The Electric Company ...and while on the job liked to "Get drunk! Get high! Get Some!" and more. Whatever. I don't know about all you, but I say hail! Flip the switch, and rock it, y'all. #ItsTooLateToDieYoung

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Title song Arrow Pierce My Heart (#5) has Andy McGibbon playing an insistent, garagey tribal country spaghetti western surf guitar creep that transmogrifies into a feedback-breathing UFO-driven beast, hackles up. You'll be looking in the rearview mirror to see if McGibbon's guitar solo is catching up to you. Skinsman Chris McMullan gets a solid high-five for his hard slapping, one-driving-shoe-on-the-gas, one-boot-on-the-brake-drumming. #Wicked #OnPoint #Work

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Song six is Eggs And Bread, a short, beautifully picked gallows song that speaks to the eternalness of love and the blues. That is all.

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Lucky seven is I Dreamt of The Dead. It rocks. Hard. I'm thinking McGibbon (who produced the album) has some serious power-pop off-shoots from his blues roots. You'll hear some Dan Auerbachness in McGibbon's vocals, or maybe it's just his Northern Irish soul shining, either way, if you had the opportunity you'd buy this song as a 45, and keep flipping it over to play:

#8 - We've all felt it. You've weathered all manner of storms for a taste of love, and you fail it. Sing along: I've Come Too Far For Love To Die.

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Erotica Laguna Lurgana is an instrumental intermission that takes you through the steamy, sultry sub-tropical rainforests, and wild west deserts of Lurgan, Northern Ireland. It will set you to whistling, again.

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The Man With An X Shaped Scar On His Cheek tells the tale of just that. Not all the details, just the essentials. A roots-rock banjo-slugged chugger with a terrific, dark melody and driving rhythm...it runs just shy of a three-minute short story and teaches in its essence:
#Bewareofdarkhairedgirls
#Ringsofgoldcanlosetheirrubystone
#Beware

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Song #11 is Those Little Lies :

lie
lī/
noun
noun: lie; plural noun: lies
1. an intentionally false statement.
"Mungo felt a pang of shame at telling Alice a lie"

intransitive verb
1a : to be or to stay at rest in a horizontal position : be prostrate : b : to assume a horizontal position —often used with down C : archaic : to reside temporarily : stay for the night : lodge d : to have sexual intercourse —used with with e : to remain inactive (as in concealment)
2: to be in a helpless or defenseless state
3: Rotten fruits on harvest day

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Number twelve!
Learning To Cope is a wailer, a wall of gnarly Stooges soul garage punk blast... imagine The Undertones squad up with The Clash to produce The Cramps, and The Afghan Whigs cover it. Drummer Chris McMullan is a monster robot, destroying everything in his path...and doing it locked in. Another Bonnevilles song that'd make a great 45.
#compactknottedhardkicker
#Peoplesaddenedbythedeathofthejimjonesrevue
#Fuckyeahhandclaps

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Song Thirteen, baby.

The closer.
Who Do I Have To Kill To Get Out of Here?
The Bonnevilles start the album with a prayer, and close it with a post-grunge howl, a thumping anthem for something we can't imagine, that we all fear is coming because of what we've done...and all that's missing is a bottle of George Dickel, a horn section...and a longer fade out.

If you're one of those who, for some reason, felt
disenfranchised after the first two Black Keys albums, or maybe the first one even, and that's not meant to slag on The Bk's...some folks feel that way. Whatever. But you'll never deny the influence, bad and world-wide...or maybe you're still bemoaning the loss of The White Stripes, then you must rock out The Bonnevilles' new album, Arrow Pierce My Heart.

The Bonnevilles, like The BK's, are flavourful muthrs. They know their rock and blues deeply, but they've absorbed it, made it their own, and mutated it, rather than wearing it like a dress-up badge or a special hat.

The Bonnevilles are their own thing. Post-grunge blues-infected rock and post-Fat Possum-infected-punkass blues dressed up in new suits and fightin' boots, like city folks, but dusty with Irish country soul. They're stadium rockers at the corner pub, they're the band you wish someone would play for you when you think no one knows how to rock anymore. They're probably what you've been waiting for.

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