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Music

Megan Bonnell

MEGAN BONNELL and DONOVAN WOODS at the Drake Underground (1150 Queen West), Saturday (November 30), doors 7 pm. $10. thedrakehotel.ca.


Don’t write off Megan Bonnell as another pretty-voiced singer/songwriter with rural roots whose precious songs you might hear in a car commercial someday. Sure, she has a lovely voice, and her folk-pop songs are imbued with a dreamy, fantastical quality.

But the Caledon native has the power to disarm you, something she does throughout her debut full-length album, Hunt & Chase (Nevado). She does weird, experimental things with her voice, gets vulnerable, and doesn’t tiptoe around angry emotions.

En route to a tour stop in Bilbao, Spain, the Toronto-based musician says she’s noticed that many women are reluctant to show too much emotion and intensity – especially toward men – out of fear of seeming “crazy” or “needy.”

“On this album, I consciously went there. I didn’t want to hold back. I was exhausted with being polite and saying what I thought people wanted to hear. So there’s a real raw undertone to the album. I didn’t think it was fair to just keep it beautiful and sweet-sounding.”

Relationship troubles and losses inform much of the material, and there’s an overarching tough-love theme about the necessity of letting go even if you aren’t ready to. It especially comes through in the song We Are Strangers Now.

“[That song is] constantly taking on new meaning. I love its sentiment. Every day we are drifting away from something. Life never stands still. It’s so gut-wrenching. The letting go. Every fibre in your being tells you not to. But at some point, time does its work and you’re able to feel at peace with what you once had and no longer hold.”

Chris Stringer (recently voted best producer in our readers poll) and Joshua Van Tassel added atmospheric production to Bonnell’s sparse piano-and-vocal-driven songs (and also now play in her band), contributing to a notably accomplished early effort.

“I’ve been playing and writing music for years, but it takes so much time to get really good at something,” Bonnell explains. “I always think of Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of 10,000 hours. Writing a bunch of shitty-to-mediocre songs is all part of the process. I feel like over the past couple of years I’ve started to be sure of who I am as a writer.”

carlag@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis

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