BONZIE

Rift Into The Secret of Things

The songs on Bonzie’s debut full-length album, Rift Into The Secret of Things, brim with the kind of unbridled youthful intensity and fiery alt-rock spirit that only a teenager could credibly conjure. Bonzie, (who is 17-year-old Chicagoan Nina Ferraro), isn’t a traditional confessional singer-songwriter. She’s more of an observer and commentator who is drawn to expressing the concerns of her generational cohort (the bond between independence and interdependence, not wanting to be manipulated, view of one’s self beyond society) with unwavering honesty, and delivering them with powerful abandon. It’s partly for this reason that Ferraro has chosen to release her songs under the moniker Bonzie (an image and word she’s long associated with her creative output) as opposed to her own name, as she did on her 2010 EP,The Promise.

“When you release music under your own name there’s this assumption that the songs are straight from the diary and very personal,” she explains. “I've never felt that way about my music. In fact, sometimes I think it's the opposite. The songs are more about concepts that are interesting for me to dive into. There’s a distance that having a moniker entails that just feels more natural to me.”

Releasing her album as Bonzie also signifies a shift away from the folk-pop sweetness of The Promise (released when Ferraro was 15) and into the edgier, more rock-oriented sound of Rift Into The Secret of Things, especially songs like “Catch/Release,” “Data Blockers,” and the wry, anti-folk “Catholic High School,” a lyrically sophisticated tune with multiple layers of meaning that begins “I don’t trust the homeless man walking in the mall / And I don’t trust the priest at the altar.” Ferraro describes writing the song as a pivotal point on her evolution as a songwriter over the past two years. “Initially, I wasn't even going to play it for anyone,” she says. “A while ago I played it for a room full of friends and it became apparent to me that it needed to be on the record.”

Another shift occurred when she began listening to a series of iconoclastic alternative albums like PJ Harvey’s Dry, Slint’s Spiderland, Elliott Smith’s Roman Candle, The Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, Bright Eyes’ Lifted, Jim O’Rourke’s Eureka, Björk’s Medúlla, and Daniel Johnston’s Hi, How Are You. ”It made me realize that there are no rules in music,” she says. “I stopped second-guessing myself and just went with what I felt was right. I figured out that if I thought about other people while writing songs, I would be doing myself a horrible disservice.”

Even as a kid growing up in Wisconsin (she moved to the Chicago area a few years ago), Ferraro has felt strongly about separating herself from people’s expectations and predispositions. When she began writing and playing her songs at age 9, she would tell people they were covers of songs by other artists, rather than admit they were her compositions. “I knew that if I presented them like, ‘I wrote this, this is my song,’ there would be a certain amount of bias coming from the person I was playing it for,” she explains. “It would become more about me and my relationship with the listener, which felt so wrong because songwriting for me was never an egocentric pursuit. I wasn’t looking for anything in return. The benefit was simply creating something and releasing the song into the atmosphere, so to speak.”

When Ferraro was 12, she began performing regularly in her hometown. “The first time I sang in front of a crowd, I only did it because I wanted to perform a song I had written,” she explains. Her presence in the live music scene soon became recognized in the Midwest, leading her to touring in New York at venues such as Rockwood Music Hall, The Living Room, and Arlene’s Grocery, and becoming a fixture on Chicago’s club circuit, performing at venues including Schubas, Double Door, Taste of Chicago, Martyrs’, and Beat Kitchen. At 15, Ferraro self-released The Promise, which attracted national college radio airplay. (The EP was produced by Will Golden and Al Sgro (Eric Hutchinson, Meiko, and Michelle Branch).

Now, Ferraro has taken on the role of co-producer with Golden, teaming up with engineer Tom Biller (Elliott Smith, Fiona Apple) on Rift Into The Secret Of Things. She describes this album as more experimental and dynamic than its predecessor. Songs like “Convert” and “Daniel and the Great Solstice,” with their finger-picked acoustic melodies, swell with elegant string arrangements that raise the emotional ante of the songs.

The album’s title is inspired by a passage in one of Ferraro’s favorite books, Thoreau’s Walden. “It's about how to get to the essence, to put aside intellect or logic in order to reach the truth, or whatever the essence of a thing is,” Ferraro explains. “Much of this album is shaped underneath that thought. There is a core to it that ties the songs together. It's subtle but it's there. It's difficult to declare this album any one thing because it varies song to song, but there is a theme. It's my hope that the listener will be able to tap into that.”

###