Wild Pink – Bonnie One - Alternate Version
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Fire Talk
I’m just gonna level with y’all, shit has been bleak. I suppose it’s all been gradual, but the rate at which things have been moving doesn’t feel remotely healthy or sustainable. Something’s gotta give. I’m trying my hardest to stay strong, stay offline, and stay present. I am an optimistic person, and I’m trying to hold onto that sense of myself, but sometimes a memory hits me and I can’t help but contrast my current life with a better one.
I think back to this time last year, and it feels like a completely different world. Around this time last fall, I was in Chicago for a friend’s wedding and felt a broad sense of optimism about the way things could unfold. Now, ICE is making an example of my hometown in Portland, and it’s even worse in Chicago. Immigrants are being disappeared into privatized, American-made concentration camps, apartment buildings are being raided indiscriminately, and NSPM-7 is laying the groundwork for nationwide spying as our government looks to stamp out anything resembling dissent. I’m not saying everything was better a year ago, but holy fuck.
Also around this time last year, I was obsessively listening to Wild Pink’s fifth LP, Dulling the Horns. I’m a longtime Wild Pink fan, but just to catch y'all up to date: Yolk In The Fur is a dreamy, wandering, revelatory statement. Billion Little Lights cranked up the heartland rock perfection. ILYSM brought things to a darker, morbid place, but Dulling the Horns feels like coming out the other side. It’s triumphant and compact, with accessible bite, scuzzy guitars, and country rock ramble. After spinning it throughout the late summer and fall, Dulling the Horns was an easy choice as one of my favorite albums of 2024. I could say more, but I’d rather just point you to Aly Eleanor’s excellent review, which I was proud to publish at the same time I was experiencing a crisis of career somewhere in the Midwest this time last year.
Near the end of Dulling the Horns, “Bonnie One” charges in with an infusion of energy in the form of distorted guitar blasts and a tale of canine love. The song comes right toward the end of the LP, a sweeping penultimate declaration that (to my emo ass) felt like an echo of Hoterlier’s “Housebroken,” but it’s probably just the use of a dog analogy at play in both songs. Regardless, the song comes across as one of the most straightforward on the record, which is otherwise an album filled with daydream logic caught in broad daylight, littered with Rorschach-like lyrics that glint at you like discarded candy wrappers as you fly down the highway.
On the original record, “Bonnie One” scratches and claws along this steady guitar riff until the song reaches a literal and metaphorical peak. Soon, the lyrics end, and the remainder of the song is played out as a bunch of distorted fiddles played by Libby Weitnauer are stacked on top of each other until it sounds like bagpipes or some eerie sound coming from an adjacent reality. This instrumental outro winds up acting as yet another musical wrinkle for the listener to interpret in an album that’s packed full of these types of open-ended moments. It’s a fun way to charge into the last song on the album and a confident bit of experimentation to help round out the release.
Just last Friday, Wild Pink dropped a Deluxe Edition of Dulling the Horns, the day before the album’s first anniversary. This expanded version includes a couple of reinterpretations from artists like Fenne Lilly and John Moreland, as well as a smattering of live tracks that showcase the group’s rough-and-tumble sound. The crown jewel, however, is an “alternate version” of “Bonnie One” that strips things back and turns the track into a haunting memoriam.
Swapping the fast-slashing electric guitar for a solemn acoustic and the fiddles for some heavenly horns courtesy of Adam Schatz of Landlady and Japanese Breakfast, this version of the song slows the original down, taking the fastest track on the original record and turning it into a thought-provoking meditation on the exact same story.
Subtle at first, this horn addition reminds me of some of the more transcendent moments on 22, A Million, offering support, brief punctuation, and space for complementation, but never overpowering the melody. Bandleader John Ross’ voice is rendered in a soft, distorted filter that makes it sound like this was recorded directly to tape. It transmutes a warm energy that commands attention and offers a brilliant new way to experience this song. When I first heard this rendition, I got hints of Nebraska, and it almost makes me want to hear what the rest of the record would sound like in this style.
I guess it feels fitting that a year out, things are getting quieter, more intentional, and reserved. This is a frightening time to be alive, but I find a great deal of peace in the few minutes of music contained here. It might feel frivolous to spend time thinking about all of this, but it’s important to me and helps with clarity and understanding. In a year of great reprioritization and acceleration, sometimes the most appropriate thing to do is slow down, scale back, and find power in the resolute.
