Bonjay (New Look)
The Garrison. Thursday, October 7, 2010.
Down Garrison way it was tumbleweed quiet early on. A Thursday night, and looking around, I figured that a lot of Bonjay's core audience must still come from the late-night party scene that they started out in. There was a DJ playing some dancey music, but no takers, and even after pushing things back there was still only a thin crowd on hand as openers New Look took the stage.
This duo — with Sarah Ruba on vox and keyb and Adam Pavao on keyb and electronics — is originally from up this way, but now based in New York City. Ruba wore a keyboard slung over her shoulder, keytar-style and played while she sang. Pavao mostly just tended to his table of gear — his arsenal included a laptop, but he seemed to be doing most of the work manually via knob-twiddling.
Musically, New Look shared a propensity for electro-dance with the headliners, but in a more detached manner. The synth sounds were spare and icy cold and included some nice squibbly sounds.1 Ruba, meanwhile, was a pretty formidable singer, showing off a strong voice that had the right amount of restraint for the material. That put this band into similar terrain as Everything All The Time, Bonjay vocalist Alanna Stuart's other band, though with less of a top 40 eighties bent.
The band also featured some appealing abstract-y animated geometric shapes projected behind them that seemed to be synced to the music. This was a handy bit of visual distraction as both band members were keeping too busy with music-making for much in the way of stagecraft. The set featured a relatively small number of songs — they were generally more 12" than radio-edit length — but even as the grooves stretched out they maintained a pop sensibility. They got a pretty good response from the crowd that was slowly filling the place up as they played. I wasn't knocked flat by what they were doing, but it was good entertainment — and a very good table-setter for what was to come.
Listen to a track from this set here.
By now, that late-night party crowd were showing up, and the place was pretty full by the time Bonjay were getting ready to play. Looking around me, I got the sense that this wasn't the usual Garrison crowd, and though Bonjay have grown and expanded their reach past the dancefloor-intense milieu they'd emerged from, that set might still be their most loyal draw. Still, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was won over by the band after seeing them on an indie rock bill.
Gathering together different crowds is a by-product of the fact that singer Alanna Stuart and sound provider Pho aren't interested in limiting themselves too much, as proven on Broughtupsy (the band's new EP being released at this show) which manages to straddle several divides. Founded in a fusion of dancefloor and dancehall, Bonjay have moved it to the next level with their ability to craft songs fortified by a lot of other pop influences that work just as well on headphones as sound systems.
Having been busy touring and trying to win over strangers, the pair obviously relished being in front of friends and family. This was a fully-supportive crowd, and after a few songs Stewart would comment, "I feel like this is an episode of The View... I could say anything and you'd cheer." She'd also noticed that this was a late-arriving crowd, confessing that at ten o'clock the band was worried they'd be playing to an empty room. But with the full house in front of them, they threw themselves into it, mixing up some older tracks with material from the new EP.
The set also mixed in some of Bonjay's distinctive covers, including TV on the Radio's "Staring at the Sun" and a medley of Feist's "How My Heart Behaves" and "Honey Honey". The covers were successful transformations, but pleasingly it was the band's new originals that were the best part of the set. Take, for example, something like "Shotta", a hooky little thing that's still amped up enough for the dancefloor.
The songs were propelled by the fact that, as always, Stuart brings a powerful presence to the stage, that hint of fully-justified self-confident swagger. Stewart was putting a lot into her performance, so it was probably as much for hew own sake that the band slowed it down mid-set for EP closer "Creepin" before storming back with a cover of Caribou's "Jamelia". There was still enough in the tank to go out on a very strong note, with the ferocious "Frawdulent" and their first big jam "Gimmee Gimmee" wrapping it all up.
Called out for an encore, the band brought out one last cover, Betty Davis' "Feelings". It's satisfying to think that Davis — for decades written off as a minor musical footnote — has recently become a go-to choice for take-no-shit women to demonstrate that they can have chops and sensuality in one fierce package. And that was something that was surely on display here.
A most worthy celebration. If you haven't gotten your hands on Broughtupsy, one of the best EP's released last year, you should find yourself a copy; and if you haven't seen Bonjay live, you should rectify that as soon as possible.2
A couple selections from this set — check out a cover here and an original stylee here.
1 I'm by no means much of a gear nerd when it somes to synths, but I believe some of Pavao's sounds came from an Oberheim SEM.
2 Bonjay will be playing a free in-store at Soundscapes on Saturday, February 12th at 7 p.m., so you could take care of both these things at once.
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