Its Too Cold To Go Outside

Mousetrap

When you think you're dying in your sleep

Heart Stop

Grow again

“It’s maybe my only classic love song” explains Bonniesongs. “It’s about the fear of loss with loving someone but it’s a happy song, celebrating love and connection but also highlighting the inevitable future heartache.”
The single has already garnered a big accolade, being a semifinalist in the International
Songwriting Competition 2024 across two categories – Album Alternative and Unsigned.
It is one of the few tracks from Bonniesongs forthcoming album recorded live with her band. “ I
actually sang the chorus melody wrong” explains Bonniesongs, “but the take was so good we had to keep it! I might sing it slightly different live…”

Strangest Feeling

The concept of the song for me is to not take life or myself too seriously and remember to stay fun and joyful, even in weird times. I wrote this song when my kiwi partner and I ended up in New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the initial wave of lockdowns was over in NZ, we found ourselves at a local homebrew club where I tried an unreal Belgian cherry sour which brought me joy at a strange time! I recorded it back in Sydney with long-term collaborator David Trumpmanis between his studio in St Peters and Golden Retriever Studios. I laid down the vocals, guitar and drums before Rhys and Tom added lashings of guitar and bass. The track bleeds into a little experimental jam we named “Stay Fun”, produced by Alyx Dennison.

Bittersweet

I originally recorded guitar, drums and voice with David Trumpmanis but we couldn’t get the vibe quite right. It was sounding folky and flowy and needed more edge. Alyx Dennison stepped in to help us produce the track to it’s rockier fate. We sped it up, rerecorded the drums and added bass. It’s my classic rock band line up of Rhys Mottley on second guitar, Tom Botting on bass, and Tully Ryan on drums. We really liked the drums in Deerhunter track Never Stops and wanted that driving energy throughout the track. 
I wrote Olive Oil while staying at my friends house in Wellington. I had recently started a game with friends where we list off our top 5 favourites thing. Olive oil, ocean, sunshine are some things that bring me joy. I wanted a happy, light content song.

Olive Oil


A typically finely crafted cut of lo-fi magic from the songwriter, ‘Halloween Birthday’ swells and swirls with a heady vocal refrain over her signature lurching drum work, with subtle string sections flourishing and billowing beneath gently plucked, stripped-back guitar layers.

Commenting on the track, Bonnie says: “Halloween Birthday is a nostalgic song that celebrates my obsession with all things Halloween with a yearning desire to have it all. Being from Ireland, where Halloween is taken very seriously, I’ve often been inspired by the spooky and supernatural. I’m interested in creating a sense of otherworldliness which is what Halloween is all about! The lyrics are literally inspired by my childhood anxiety of getting to my friends’ birthday party, as well as trick or treating before all the good sweets were gone.”

Halloween Birthday

Coo Coo! new tune sample #1

Great Falls is about falling off the cliffs between Greystones and Bray, Co. Wicklow. This is a little rough demo I made at home, singing, playing and looping live. <3 

Great Falls Demo

A little acoustic set I did with Artsound FM, Canberra in July 2016.
Recorded by Chris Deacon

Songs -
Great Falls
Sand Dunes
Cat and Mouse
Goodbye
Dinogon
Mousetrap
Gone

Bonniesongs Acoustic Set Live @ Artsound Fm

'Follow Me' is the lead single from 'Strings', a colourful four-track journey from the mind of Sydney based art-folk virtuoso Bonniesongs. 

Strings is a live EP made by Bonnie Stewart (guitar, vox, percussion), Freya Schack-Arnott (cello) and Sascha Bota (viola). Recorded in Tempe Jetz 2017 by Peter Farrar. Mastered by David Trumpmanis. Released with Art As Catharsis.
https://bonniesongs.bandcamp.com/

Artwork by Ida Lawrence x

Follow Me

First single of upcoming debut album Energetic Mind. 

Commenting on the track, Stewart says: “I wrote it on an extremely hot summer’s day in my very small sweaty music room at my house in Sydney. All I wanted to do was be at the beach having refreshingly cold things (like ice cream...) but I was too hot to do anything about it.”

Energetic Mind

Ice Cream

"Frank is inspired by Mary Shelley's story of Frankenstein.

Everyone including its creator, hates the creature and finds it horrible and terrifying. At first the creature feels nothing but love and appreciation for life, but soon is isolated and becomes lonely, angry and vengeful! I thought a lot about the common misconception that the creature is called Frankenstein when really the true monster and name, is its creator.

It’s about being misunderstood, judged,controlled, about identity, power and breaking through barriers.

It has an interesting line up I guess with banjo, cello, drums, bass, gang vocals... etc… It was so satisfying getting to put down the drums on this one and getting it all fleshed out and scary!

As with a lot of my songs, it has a looping little riff, with verses, choruses created by vocals and texture, then leads into a grungy heavier vibe at the end.

Frank is one of my favourites... it starts sweet and creepy but lets loose at the end… Bringing together dark folk and rocky grunge."
lyrics
Oh I’m afraid, your time is up today
Oh it’s too late, you can not run away

Creeping, seeping, bleeding, weeping, I awake the dead
Suffer for your sins, something is missing from your head
A lobotomy, mmm… A lobotomy, mmm…

Oh I’m afraid, the creature’s on its way
Oh it’s too late, this thing it’s here to stay

Waking, falling, running, taking anything that lives
Nothing can be safe from me, no nothing can forgive
I’m a monster, mmm… I’m a monster and I’m coming for your head

I’m a monster, I’m a monster and I’m coming for your head
Coulda been me, coulda been me, coulda been me, coulda been me
I’m already a monster
Coulda been dead, coulda been dead, coulda been dead, coulda been dead
I’m already a monster

Cautious of me I understand
But I feel, something’s underhand
Suspicious that something’s kept from sight
But I don’t want the things you have
credits
from Energetic Mind, released September 6, 2019
Bonnie Stewart: vocals, guitar, banjo, drums, percussion
Freya Schack- Arnott: cello
Thomas Botting: double and electric bass
Alyx Dennison and David Trumpmanis: guitar noodles and zombie vocals

Recorded, mixed and mastered by David Trumpmanis
Produced by Alyx Dennison

Frank

For a peck of audiences in Australia over the past couple of years, Bonnie Stewart (Ireland) has been one of those subtly transcendent artists. Her lilting vocals float over gentle peaks of acoustic and electronic instruments, layered ethereally into what may be a moderately enchanted loop pedal. Under the spell of thrumming guitar, Stewart renders her arrangements with a fidelity of performance that seems to amplify an almost spectral presence. This is Bonniesongs. She’ll play loudly whilst making you ridiculously aware of silence and then go some way to reminding you how music is at its most basic, mere vibration moving through air, occupying the same molecular space as the incorporeal.

Bonniesongs

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