photo credit: John Dowd
Contact
- Daniel Gill at Force Field PR
[email: daniel@forcefieldpr.com]
Bio
After a decade of playing in punk and hardcore bands in Southern California, Garrett La Bonte started La Bonte in 2015 to explore his impulses for work grounded in patience: slow resonances, discomforting absences, and wayward, creeping catharses. It is a deeply personal project.
Don’t Let This Define Me, La Bonte’s debut record, frankly articulates the loneliness and isolation of love lost, but avoids confessions or saccharine sentiment. The songs are embodied and exacting, with a guttural affective impact. The record is built of loss, but it bears no traces of a lack in the songwriting’s enlivened and intelligent sense-making, we find renewed strength in radical articulations of deep vulnerability. La Bonte feels his way to planting his feet on the ground, and we do, too. Despite life’s litany of chaoses, love’s dissolution, and other furies, this record leads us (haltingly) forward.
Over two years, several friends and collaborators (Eric Shevrin of Young Jesus, Brooke Dickson of The Regrettes, Janey Riech of Layman, among others) helped bring this record to life. It was recorded, mixed, and produced by Colin Knight at Paradise Records (Fury, Death Bells, Diztort).
Current Release
La Bonte
Don’t Let This Define Me
(Anxiety Blanket Records)
Street Date: August 27, 2021
Track List:
1. The Sky
2. Don’t Let This Define Me
3. Red Card
4. American Dance Bands
5. Step Out
6. Box Fan
7. Francis Right
8. Joyous (I Know This)
9. The Struggle Between Loneliness & Being Alone
Photos (click for hi-res)
photo credit: (1-2) Joey Tobin (3) John Dowd