EVENING HYMNS
Evening Hymns are sung from the cathedrals of talls trees. They capture the spirit of moments, of friends around a bonfire on a foggy beach, the crunching of snowshoes in the silence of a winter night and memories of tribal boys growing up with pellet guns, fishing and handmade forts.
Songwriter Jonas Bonnetta comes out of the hinterland, along with a yelping group of banshees and some sweet-singing wood nymphs with Evening Hymns' latest release Spirit Guides. Honing songs while cutting logs into planks in the sawdust and sunset of a clearing, Bonnetta has the ear of a woodsman: he knows when the saw blade is dull by the sound it makes against the wood. The album is full of wild sounds for the urban world, from the experience of seasons between two extremes: raucous touring nights with shouts in the streetlights, and in the woods, operating the sawmill he bought with his father a few years back. Somewhere between the two, Evening Hymns finds a rhythm for modern life.
Fiercely emotional and beautifully crafted, Spirit Guides draws a map of music as the crow flies.
-Meg Sheffield
Songwriter Jonas Bonnetta comes out of the hinterland, along with a yelping group of banshees and some sweet-singing wood nymphs with Evening Hymns' latest release Spirit Guides. Honing songs while cutting logs into planks in the sawdust and sunset of a clearing, Bonnetta has the ear of a woodsman: he knows when the saw blade is dull by the sound it makes against the wood. The album is full of wild sounds for the urban world, from the experience of seasons between two extremes: raucous touring nights with shouts in the streetlights, and in the woods, operating the sawmill he bought with his father a few years back. Somewhere between the two, Evening Hymns finds a rhythm for modern life.
Fiercely emotional and beautifully crafted, Spirit Guides draws a map of music as the crow flies.
-Meg Sheffield
- First question: why did you pick your band name?
I wanted to create something a bit less solo to work under.
The music is quite often larger than one person and I wanted to reflect that.
- How have you decide to play the genre you do?
It's not really a decision. It's just the music I make.
- Reading some of your interviews and listening some of your songs, it's possible to infer your limitless love for your family. Can you spend some words about that?
I love them.
I think that's obvious.
I've spend so much of my life growing beside them that they know me better than most people and I the same for them.
It's an intimate connection that is difficult to replicate with other humans.
I wanted to create something a bit less solo to work under.
The music is quite often larger than one person and I wanted to reflect that.
- How have you decide to play the genre you do?
It's not really a decision. It's just the music I make.
- Reading some of your interviews and listening some of your songs, it's possible to infer your limitless love for your family. Can you spend some words about that?
I love them.
I think that's obvious.
I've spend so much of my life growing beside them that they know me better than most people and I the same for them.
It's an intimate connection that is difficult to replicate with other humans.
- In 2009 you published your own "Spirit Guides". What's that concept?
Not really a concept album.
The idea behind the title is that there is something that guides us, leads us, that maybe doesn't exist in the physical world.
- The 2012 is the year of the "Spectral Dusk". In the album there's the namesake song. What is the meaning of this Dusk?
The dusk is the end of the day. The setting of the sun. The moment when one thing ends and another thing begins. It's a moment of transition.
- Last September 2015 you released your last album "Quiet Energies". Tell me something about the quiet energies you'd like to spread with the songs of this album?
If the first record was about love, and the second record was about death, then this new one is about hope and healing.
Not really a concept album.
The idea behind the title is that there is something that guides us, leads us, that maybe doesn't exist in the physical world.
- The 2012 is the year of the "Spectral Dusk". In the album there's the namesake song. What is the meaning of this Dusk?
The dusk is the end of the day. The setting of the sun. The moment when one thing ends and another thing begins. It's a moment of transition.
- Last September 2015 you released your last album "Quiet Energies". Tell me something about the quiet energies you'd like to spread with the songs of this album?
If the first record was about love, and the second record was about death, then this new one is about hope and healing.
- Everytime i listen to Port Hope, i enter in an amazing atmosphere. Thank you for that, anyway when you wrote this song, what did you want to convey?
I think I wanted to create movement.
The feeling of a rainy day and being in a warm car and rolling through the countryside.
- Of all of your songs, which and why is for you your emblem songs?
I don't really love any one song. They're all just friends of mine that I've been close with at one point in time.
Dead Deer from Spirit Guides is still close to my heart.
Asleep In The Pews from Spectral Dusk.
Rescue Teams from Quiet Energies.
Those three songs felt really complete to me when they were written. I'm proud of those ones.
- What do you think about "the experience"? I meant, i think that the art of travelling gives to yourself the possibility to enreach your own.. what's your opinion?
I hope that with traveling I get the chance to study life and human beings and the way they navigate the world and better understand what my own life means and how to add clarity to my art and my life.
I've learned so much from traveling the world with my music in that sense. It's learning about the depth of human emotion and intellect. I'm very grateful.
I think I wanted to create movement.
The feeling of a rainy day and being in a warm car and rolling through the countryside.
- Of all of your songs, which and why is for you your emblem songs?
I don't really love any one song. They're all just friends of mine that I've been close with at one point in time.
Dead Deer from Spirit Guides is still close to my heart.
Asleep In The Pews from Spectral Dusk.
Rescue Teams from Quiet Energies.
Those three songs felt really complete to me when they were written. I'm proud of those ones.
- What do you think about "the experience"? I meant, i think that the art of travelling gives to yourself the possibility to enreach your own.. what's your opinion?
I hope that with traveling I get the chance to study life and human beings and the way they navigate the world and better understand what my own life means and how to add clarity to my art and my life.
I've learned so much from traveling the world with my music in that sense. It's learning about the depth of human emotion and intellect. I'm very grateful.