Simon Bonney has released his compilation album
Past, Present, Future today on
Mute.
Past, Present, Future includes songs from his last two albums,
Forever (1992) and
Everyman (1994), as well as six new tracks for an unreleased album titled
Eyes of Blue. Simon has also released the re-mastered video for his song “Don't Walk Away From Love.” Watch and share the video
here. Stream and purchase
Past, Present, Future here.
Reflecting on the message found in “Don’t Walk Away From Love,” Bonney says,
“In a relationship you can focus on the positive or you can focus on the negative. The one you feed the most will define that relationship. ‘Don’t Walk Away From Love’ is about embracing the positive.”
Beginning Sunday in Nashville, Bonney will embark on a tour of the Eastern United States alongside Mark Lanegan. See below for a full itinerary and purchase tickets
here.
Past, Present, Future is the beautiful amalgamation of songs taken from two of Bonney’s previously released albums: 1992’s
Forever, a deeply personal and intimate record, and 1994’s
Everyman, his socio-political opus that has grown in relevance as rapid change and social dislocation has increased. Rounding out
Past, Present, Future are a number of songs unearthed from Bonney’s lost album,
Eyes of Blue.
Forever and
Everyman were recorded during Bonney’s time living in the US while his band Crime & the City Solution remained on hiatus. At this time, he turned to the melancholy and plaintive sounds of dobro and lap steel of 1970s country music. In these sounds he found a feeling of longing for the familiar, for security and stability, songs about family and belonging, memories of a childhood farm in Tasmania. The result was two country-tinged, compassionate and prescient portraits of life in late 20th Century America through Tasmanian eyes.
Bonney’s path led him into outback Australia, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh – a life rich in extremes of color and conflict, of trauma, of humanity and inhumanity, of power and powerlessness. It was not always easy to witness and eventually, as happens with all that walk this road, he had seen too much and it was time to stop. It was time to re-embrace something simple, something personal – his music. He pulled tapes from shoeboxes and listened to the old albums as well as tracks that were destined for an unreleased album,
Eyes of Blue, which was recorded in Detroit with a band featuring
Matt Smith(Outrageous Cherry, the Volbeats),
Troy Gregory (the Dirtbombs, Electric Six, Killing Joke) and a guest appearance by
Chuck Prophet. As he revisited these earlier recordings, Bonney found that they sounded fresh and every bit as relevant – if not more relevant – than when he had recorded them.
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