Haley Bonar: "It’s good to remove yourself from your comfort zone"

Every now and again, though, a case slips through the net. Someone gets the chance to develop over the course of a handful of albums and is able to arrive in the place we could all see them in when that first scrappy recording made it to our ears. Haley Bonar is one such artist.

The St Paul, Minnesota, residing singer (by way of Canada and South Dakota) released her first album back in 2001 before finding help and support from Low, her fellow Minnesotans, who took Bonar on tour and released her second proper studio album ...The Size of Planets on their Chairkicker’s Union label. Yet Bonar’s small triumphs were still something of a secret to UK and European ears. That’s a shame as her early folk-flecked records, the highlight of them being Lure the Fox, soaked in gorgeous organ and acoustic guitar – and Bonar’s sweetly disarming voice – are a real treat. Slowly but surely Bonar started to make inroads, and 2011’s brilliant Golder, a record of superb indie rock that’s rarely made these days, showed off a fuller sound - thanks to a roster of settled and trusted musicians that’s reached something of an apex with this year’s Last War, her sixth studio album, despite her being only just into her 30s. It's a wondrous record, which adds new wave and post-punk bass to that classic indie pop sound - Bonar is electrifying from start to finish. The upbeat music disguises dark and honest lyrics in gleaming costume, imbuing tracks like “Heaven’s Made for Two” with something a little meatier than your average song about relationships. There seems to be plenty to talk about when I dial up Bonar on Skype, sunlight bathing her apartment, and the main thing is – of course – what took you so long?

The first question I have to ask Haley is why, after all this time, is Last War the album that’s really brought her to our attention? “I don’t really know!” she confesses. “My first record came out in 2003 and I think it was released in Europe and the UK but it was on a really, really tiny label! And ever since then I’ve not really been on a label proper.” Bonar goes on to detail her own hard work in getting her music out there: “I had self-released stuff, or it was put out by a label here that doesn’t even exist anymore. But Graveface Records put out records by my other band Gramma’s Boyfriend and so Ryan [Graveface, owner and also part of Black Moth Super Rainbow] and I had been talking about putting a record out ever since.” Graveface, a fine record label, seem to be perfect bedfellows for Bonar: “It connects the dots since everybody over there is really cool.” But to get back to impact of Last War? Bonar is assuredly unsure: “As far as a wider audience, I think people just like music that makes them move, naturally. People are drawn to that a little bit more than story telling folk, sadness….I dunno!”

Last War is the sound of Bonar as a musician entirely comfortable with the way she’s writing and performing; what’s interesting to note is the career arc – stylistically speaking – that she’s taken to get to the fantastic indie rock on this sixth album. Bonar started out pretty much just as her and an acoustic guitar, her soft folk music being discovered by Low and Andrew Bird along the way, and those early albums were ones of quiet introspection. But as her career progressed, a record like Lure the Fox started to add just a little bit of volume, Golder properly plugged in and rocked out, and Last War continues this theme while adding new wave and post-punk elements. I say to Haley that it’s often the other way around: artists start off angry and loud and eventually they make their way to the quieter, moody stuff – what’s her take on that? “The way that I was schooled in music probably has something to do with that,” she begins. “I grew up listening to and going to punk shows, and I really love rock music – I always have. I love angry music and I think my early stuff, even though it’s quiet, sounds pretty pissed off a lot of the time…I dunno, to me it was like cooler to move away from stuff I was enthused by.” Bonar goes on to tell me of the artists who let her know that quiet music could still be emotive: “When I first heard Elliott Smith or Richard Buckner, those guys are pretty punk sounding without being punk, and I really connected with that, I thought it was super cool. So I thought, y’know, it’s okay to write quiet, melodramatic songs about heartbreak which I don’t know anything about because I’m only eighteen!” So it was never a conscious decision to develop in a certain direction? “I think over the years, playing music and playing live shows and being in a more punky band…it’s never been a conscious decision. I’ve never said ‘I’m going to make this record sound like this’. It’s just always naturally progressed and I think you can hear that in every record – there’s little hints of what the next one might sound like.”

I always wonder how much impact place has on the sound of an artist’s music, and it was interesting to note that Golder, with its full band sound, was written during a year’s stay for Bonar in Portland, Oregon. Did moving there from Missouri have any impact on sound? “I pretty much wrote that record [Golder] when I was living in Oregon,” says Haley. “I lived there for a year and that was kind of the purpose I guess. When I finished writing I moved back here [St Paul] and recorded it and I’ve been here ever since.” What did Bonar think of Portland? It does get something of a name for itself due to Portlandia…“It’s where young people go
to retire!” laughs Haley. “They’re all really cute and they’re all doing cool stuff; I moved out there not really knowing anybody, and it kinda felt tortured in that way. I needed to make myself uncomfortable and be a stranger in a strange place…and it was all moody out there. The sky is really low, there’s a lot of mountains and really ominous beauty and I loved being a loner out there….and it really obviously helped me because I wrote about nineteen songs. It was like a double album and I though, naaaah - keep it to thirteen songs! But it’s good to remove yourself from your comfort zone for any kind of artist, and shake off the dust a little bit.”

Sticking with the idea of place, Bonar explains a bit of her own background: “My parents are from Canada, my family is all based out of Manitoba pretty much. I didn’t spend a lot of time there; I lived there until I was two and we moved to the United States. Growing up in the Black Hills [of South Dakota] was definitely very influential; it was a very beautiful place to grow up but it was also a very right-wing, Christian kind of place and so it was easy to rebel there! That had an influence, and then I moved to the coldest place, Minnesota!” Bonar tells me that the cold winters were actually beneficial to her song writing, as well as the place she met touring pals Low: “When I was 18 I lived in Duluth, where Low is from and that’s how we met; the fact that the winters here are literally five or six months long – that’s all you need to know and it’s why the Minnesota music scene is so strong. We’re all trapped inside for a whole six months! You’ve got nothing else to do but feel sorry for yourself and work on music! As much as I hate the winter here, I’ve learned to appreciate it as it really focuses you on what you’re doing.”

Going back to Bonar’s rejection of the double album notion is an interesting one; Last War is nine songs long and just over thirty minutes in length. I say to Haley that is one of the things I really like about the album – the brevity is beneficial and it feels like a great pop record as a result…but did it cause any problems when it came to trying to release the album? “I actually did have to put another song on,” reveals Bonar. “My distributor told me that if I didn’t have a record that was, like, thirty-one minutes long it wouldn’t or couldn’t sell – which to me is total fucking bullshit! But it actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we recorded ‘Woke Up In My Future’ at Dave Grohl’s studio for a totally different project. It was just for a charity seven-inch, and when we recorded it I was really bummed it wasn’t on the record…’this would be so good on my record, but my record’s done!’ and then they told me ‘no, your record’s too short!’” Bonar is also a fan of short albums: “I like short records; I like short shows! I don’t even wanna see Led Zeppelin for three hours – keep it fresh, leave people wanting more rather than being tired at the end of it.”

As well as having toured with Low and appearing on record with Andrew Bird, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon is another big name in Bonar’s life. Vernon appears twice on Last War, providing backing vocals for “From A Cage” and the album closing highlight “Eat For Free”, and Bonar explains his appearance was never an intention from the start: “Working with Justin was cool because how he ended up on the record was very serendipitous. He and I were sort of pen pals,” she explains, “we had a lot of mutual friends and he lives relatively close. I started sending him demos because…I don’t know, I just did! I’d sent him some and he said ‘keep sending them!’, and then I wrote ‘From A Cage’…I think I was trying to impress him! I wrote that and then ten minutes after I’d finished I sent it to him and he really loved it!” Vernon couldn’t stop listening: “He was like ‘I’ve listened to this fuckin' song fifty fuckin' times, it’s so cool, it’s so great!’ He told me not to change it and to put it on the record just the way it was. So then I went to his house to hang out and he offered to sing on it…and it just happened. Obviously he’s a really talented person and I respect his music a lot.”

There’s a personal aspect of Last War and Bonar’s life that I want to get to, but one I want to broach in a way that makes it clear I’m not some kind of patronising sexist. So while I say that I think the record rather than being a dark and depressing listen, it’s simply got a lyrical honesty and realism (Bonar agrees: “Yeah I think so; definitely all of those songs came out of a real place for me, so I’d be lying if I told you it was fiction”) that I think comes from a certain part of Bonar’s personal life. I say, straight from the off, that I’m not talking about the day-to-day mechanics of being a single mother with a music career, not how she copes with juggling responsibilities but more about how this part of her life has directly affected her music and lyrics. I mention that when I interviewed Sean Carey (of S.Carey and Bon Iver) he explained to me that becoming a father stripped away any pretensions he had and made him worry less about what people thought of his music. He felt it made his songs more honest…is this something Bonar identifies with, if she’s not too tired of discussing it? “Yeah…I’ve definitely talked about that a lot with people – male and female interviewers – who say ‘oh how do you do this by yourself?’ or whatever,” she explains. “I co-parent with my daughter’s father and we definitely work together on that…but when I had her and went through that really dramatic change where you go from being a completely content and selfish human being to grow a human being and be responsible for someone else. When you’re a sensitive person it’s pretty eye-opening in a lot of ways and it kinda strips away your ego. There’s definitely a huge sense of power that comes with giving birth – just the physical act of it.” And did that impact on her writing? “After that my songs just sort of got a little more focused,” admits Haley, “and I became a little more focused because it felt like I wasn’t just doing it for fun anymore – as much as it is a craft and I’ve been working on it for a long time, now I need to support my family. I think most people who have children [that are in the entertainment industry] can vouch for that…unless you’re Angelina Jolie and you have someone raising your kid for you!”

While Bonar will continue to tour and promote Last War, she’s definitely not one for standing still: “I’m on to the next project already!” she exclaims. “I have most of a new record written and we’ll start recording that this fall and hopefully have a new record out this year.” It’s not a case of being restless, or being a professional bowing to label pressure, Bonar just loves to make music: “That’s my favourite part about music – it’s not the glamour or non-glamour, the social media or being in the spotlight…that’s all secondary to me and the most important thing and what I get most joy out of is writing, recording in my apartment and then taking these songs to musicians that I love and respect, working out an arrangement and recording it. That’s what makes me happiest and I like to be in that place as much as I can.”

Last War is out now on Memphis Industries. Haley tours the UK in October - dates here.