A Thursday night on Slater Street and I’m welcomed into town with a warm wind and a honking busker rendering songs I somehow don’t know. I’m headed somewhere I do know the songs though, and that is a place called Bonny Doon. I believe it’s a town somewhere in California, transplanted here for one night only courtesy of the Detroit band bearing its name.
Down in the remodelled bowels of the Jacaranda – now an even tighter space than it was when I misspent a significant part of my youth there, attending questionable open mic nights – the DJ is playing the impeccable grooves of the Lijadu Sisters. A small crowd of cellar dwellers chats and mingles as the opening band amble onto the stage.
Muriel are a relatively new act, comprising songwriter Zak Thomas on guitar, Rachel Crabbe on guitar, keyboard and harmonium, Andy Oliveri on guitar and lap steel, Will Davies on bass and the excellent Jamie Joiner on drums. Thomas is a tall figure with gentle grace who barely fits below the basement’s low ceilings and leads the band through a selection from their eponymous debut.
Coming out of his tattoo shop in Cardiff with delicate songs and a quiet determination, the five-piece are well worth arriving early for, delivering a set that is unafraid to be fragile, with hushed harmonium drones bridging songs and sections. Oliveri’s lap steel guitar occasionally achieves surprising tones, at times like a ship’s horn blowing over the River Mersey on Relative. Songs build and circle, raising the volume at times and dropping back down again with a precision that impresses the early birds.
Oliveri takes a break from some high-speed guitar tuning to encourage us to pick up some of their vinyl or cassettes, explaining the need to pay off parking ticket payments with their merch stall money – a familiar problem with anyone who’s ever been a musician on the road.
By the time they close with a lovely Lavender by the Frames, with Crabbe curling out a beautifully fierce guitar line, I get the sense there are a few converts among the crowd.
I head out for a smoke, and by the time I return, the room is suddenly packed as Bonny Doon finish their tuning and launch into Crooked Creek from their latest LP. “I hear the sound of a new world being born” indeed. It’s perhaps not a new world of sound, with two white Telecasters, Fender amps and an admittedly immaculate bass and drums combo not exactly pushing the envelope of instrumental possibilities, but there’s nonetheless a special spark of creation here. As becomes clear throughout the set, there’s an underlying cosmic element that manifests in burning palo santo and sage and asking questions of the universe without expecting reply – instead turning inwards to locate the answers.
Second song Saved asks, “are you a believer or not?”, and here I wholeheartedly answer “yes!” I first heard Bonny Doon back in 2018, buying their first two albums as soon as their contemplative Detroit tones entered my orbit. I couldn’t place exactly what drew me in – perhaps the first LP’s lovely moments of scuzzy tape manipulations first captured the ear, but the overall sound of both records somehow captures a feeling I recognise and have come to cherish. “I am here / I am alive” they sing on a cut from second LP Longwave, and sometimes that is enough.
There’s a strong sense of the awareness of passing time threaded through their songs, “it’s a long long way down to the ground/for such a short time on the tree”, confirmed by the one-two punch of reflective stalwart What Time Is It In Portland? and most recent single Clock Keeps Ticking, the latter shorn of its glossy studio power but somehow glowing even more for it, the guitar solo bedding in rather than bursting out of the speakers.
Guitarist / vocalists Bill Lennox and Bobby Colombo are an amiable duo, smiling and trading vocals and knotty guitar lines throughout, tangled together like vines on a trellis. They break their tour van pact not to mention The Beatles by remarking on the blue plaque adorning the storied venue. The Jacaranda crowd laughs at their question about finding somewhere to go swimming, having travelled up from Brighton where they opened their tour the previous day. Perhaps the Mersey will oblige, perhaps they’ll wait until they pull into Cardiff Bay later in the tour.
Pointing to the future, they play a new track Losing My Cool that continues to cruise the same twin guitar highways, and it’s always positive to know bands celebrating a decade of releases are still looking forwards down the road.
Lost My Way is possibly the oldest song I know in the set, dating back to their first release eleven years ago. It packs a veteran’s punch here, the band’s punk roots forcing their way through with a fierce beat from drummer Jake Kmiecik that locks with Colson Miller’s bass to great effect. Kmiecik is an excellent drummer, often found with shakers in hand, never dropping a beat and bringing rhythmic invention, wide dynamics and dexterity throughout.
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I recall reading an interview with the band, in which they mentioned that (Crowded), the last track on their self-titled debut was merely the sound of a single guitar amp mic threaded through a chorus pedal. All the other instrument tracks are muted, only heard bleeding onto the track through one source. They chose this idiosyncratic isolation just because it had immaculate ‘vibe’, and that’s exactly the indefinable magic they bring to the set tonight.
Saw A Light pulls an old Neil Young trick of appropriating a Stones tune, singing “I had no songs / So I borrowed an old one / Wild horses couldn’t drag me away” and conjures a similarly wasted vibe previously summoned by both artists, but still utterly recognisable Bonny Doon. Their wry humour always stops any melancholic build-up from getting too far into the downs.
The funniest line comes in closer A Lotta Things, “I’m faking my own death/ So I can get some rest/I know, I’ve thought of everything”. I can’t say that on low days I haven’t daydreamed about the Reggie Perrin path, maybe we all do. But it’s penultimate song Long Wave, the title track from their second LP, a lovely meditation on time, mental space and existence, that echoes in my mind for days afterwards.
“You are who you’re supposed to be” sing the band, enough times for it to sink in deeply. “You are who you’re supposed to be”.
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