Megan Bonnell has released Separate Rooms, her third full-length album. The self-assured singer-songwriter from Toronto Canada brings a bold statement with a mix of styles and subjects that are not the typical singer-songwriter fare. With a strong pop/folk combination, her warm voice sings about a range of subjects, from intense emotions to ones of independence. The production of Separate Rooms was a collaborative effort with the production team of Chris Stringer and Joshua Van Tassel, Bonnell manages to meld anthemic pop appeal, with textured layered nuances of 70’s new wave, epic alt-rock ballads of the 90’s, and traditional folk artisanship. Separate Rooms is a fine collection of ten tracks from the two-time Canadian Folk Music Award nominee. That’s the short of it!
Positives:
Creative songwriting that offers unique lyrics wrapped in a multi-layered texture of vocal harmonies and musical colors.
Bottom Line:
Megan Bonnell’s Separate Rooms is rich in its sonic diversity and wide-ranging in its emotional lyrics about pain, themes of love and love lost, and even mental illness, but in itself, Bonnell still manages to portray a message of strength and perseverance. The album is cohesive in sound while still giving the listener a creative musical journey that is original and diverse. In fact, that is Bonnell’s biggest strength, her musical diversity and the various styles and setting she surrounds her lyrics with. The result is a hip mix of pop-folk that has just the right amount of emotion and edginess to captivate the listener.