Alan Bonner’s 2013 ‘Balladeer’ quite impressed with its simple, honest arrangements and honest humanity. His 2008 ‘Songs for the Heart Shaped’ is now receiving another PR push, and it has better artwork and presents Bonner, who continues to exist in the zero-money peripheries of music-making, as a documenter of life in the slow lane.
‘She waits on tables… she wipes every surface clean’ might not be the most auspicious of couplets to have ever graced an album, but the all-too familiar, everyday dialogue that occupies the lyrical space of ‘Songs for the Heart Shaped’ is the epitome of unromanticised reality.
The collection is very much centres around singer-songwriterly piano-led ballads, through which a crestfallen, world-weary sadness permeates, but Bonner displays moments of real passion which lift his songs above mediocrity as he dredges into bitter breakups and flashes of anger for inspiration.
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