La Bonte - Don’t Let This Define Me (2021)

Garrett La Bonte spent the best part of ten years playing in punk and hardcore outfits across Southern California, before starting his own project. Using the moniker La Bonte, he made a space for something more sedate and reflective, a counterpoint to the intensity of previous projects that allows patience a key role. Despite being a deeply personal project, the current iteration of La Bonte welcomes a series of other musicians too, with Evan Schaid (drums, percussion), Janey Riech (vocals), Brooke Dickson (vocals), Eric Shevrin (piano, synths), Jacob Maag (lapsteel), Ellen Schloff (violin) and Jake Ingalls (cello) all helping to craft the sound.

New album Don’t Let This Define Me will be released via Anxiety Blanket later this month, and the title track serves as the perfect introduction to the La Bonte sound. Namely, how it manages to offer such an unguarded and intimate tone while retaining a certain abstraction. Hurdling any danger of becoming sentimental and mawkish with sharp writing and implied meaning. Here we find a young person confused and guilty, feeling responsible for a world unravelling at the seams. Apocalyptic visions follow, and a Biblical song sung by his mother. Words full of portent and sublime glory. Loss in its keenest form. Don't Let This Define Me comes from a place of beautiful esotericism, as La Bonte's poetry excels, converging with bright instrumentals, and perfect production by Colin Knight (Fury, Death Bells, Diztort), off which the title track is a terrific piece of contemporary sentimental Americana with strong folk rock and slowcore foundations.