Bonnie Milne Releases New Music

Instrumental recordings can speak volumes without a player uttering a single phrase, and in the case of the new singles “Uncertain” and “New Beginnings” from composer/player Bonnie Milne, the melodies she presents are simply too grand to share the spotlight with any verses. With nothing more than her piano keys, Milne depicts elegance, reflection, and an acerbic attention to detail that has been missing from most of the pop music I’ve been listening to in 2022, all while rejecting the very notion of indulgence in her composing style. In these two songs, there just isn’t room for anything more than the tonal expressiveness of the instrument on its own. 

To me, the piano’s emittances in “New Beginnings” feel like lyrics emerging from the silence to guide us toward a narrative too larger than life to be conveyed through linguistics alone. There’s definitely a sense of cohesiveness between the keys that would have been wholly broken up with the presence of a bassline or a percussive element, and one could even argue that a vocal would have been just a touch overwhelming for the moodiness of the melodies as they’re made to stand in this performance. 

“Uncertain” is the dreamier piece between these two singles, but its overt surrealism doesn’t influence how we’re to interpret the meaning of its core narrative. Much like its counterpart, “Uncertain” is a piece that was born on the back of its keys, albeit a synthetic slew, but its arrangement invites us to look deeper, past its implied harmonies into another dimension of the song as it could be realized when removed from its setting. This is a transcendent work, and perhaps the more implicitly lyrical of the pair of tracks Milne is sharing with the world this spring season. 

I like that Bonnie Milne is eagerly exploring her depth and experimenting with the limits a single instrument can possess in these two songs, and although this isn’t the most conventional look a pop fan can go for in 2022, it’s undeniably one of the more intriguing and immersive that I’ve come across in the past few months. This is a songwriter who has a lot of introspection in her artistry, and whether it’s something you would typically go for in a musical soundscape or not, her use of surrealism in both “New Beginnings” and “Uncertain” is something that makes me curious to hear a follow-up to Anticipation in the near future. 

Nicole Killian