Saying an artist's music is "gaining velocity" usually means it's exploding in popularity; finding a larger (and growing) audience. For the songs of Twin Cities musician Haley Bonar, though, it's literally true. Her musical projects, first solo and now with her band Gramma's Boyfriend, have been increasing in tempo and kick for the duration of her decade-long career. She started as an alt-country singer-songwriter, added a slightly heavier electric guitar and percussion sound to her 2014 album Last War, and is now wielding a Joan Jett-like snarl as the frontwoman of dance-punk outfit Gramma's Boyfriend.
Gramma's Boyfriend's latest single (which is exactly the phrase Bonar and her bandmates must have been angling for with that band name) is a cover of Daniel Jonhston's "I Live My Broken Dreams," and is not nearly as downtrodden as that title suggests. From her cheeky mic-check in the song's opening seconds, Bonar's delivery is all confident nonchalance. With throaty, jaded vocals and woozy-but-thumping backing instrumentation by Jeremy Ylvisaker, Mark Erickson, Luke Anderson and Jacob Hanson, "I Live My Broken Dreams" sounds like the last song before the lights come up in an '80s-themed dive bar.
PERM comes out October 9 on Graveface Records.
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