are you ready to groove? {44/24}
featuring Nicolai Dunger, Sonofdov, Camille Miller & more
This review is written by Bonnie Orbison. She is a published author and her latest release is the poetry collection Pretty Tennessee. If you enjoy her writing, more can be found on her online journal Howdy Bonnie! (poetry and personal diary essays) as well as with her fiction novels.
Itinerary of this week’s post:
our artist pick!
album & EP releases 📀
song releases 💿
recommendations 📼
the end ✨
1. our artist pick - Camille Miller!
If you look up my name Bonnie Orbison, you’re gonna find a video of a live performance with Roy Orbison and Bonnie Raitt. When Camille Miller sent in her songs with comparing her sound to Raitt, I knew I’d like her music.
In Not Ready, Miller sings on her experiences of moving around internationally a lot in her life already. As an avid solo-traveler, always a bag packed just in case I feel like booking a flight overnight, I highly related to the song. Not sure if all the travels are just me looking for a home, a place I feel immediately I belong to, so the sensitivity of not feeling ready to commit to any sort of relationship wherever I am hits close to my heart.
Another single off her upcoming album, Leave it Alone is described as “a Roots-Rock Soul-Pop influenced track about taking back personal power and standing up for yourself”. There is just something about rock on standing one’s ground and taking up space in a world that sometimes tells us we shouldn’t.
2. album & EP releases 📀
Wheel of Dharma by Joe Elefante is a modern Jazz album that awoke the Jazz-graduate student in me. Elefant describes it as “performing all original material, but with a reverent eye on the past, present, and future of the music.” and I couldn’t have summed it up better. I feel like people constantly say jazz is dead and no one is truly making it anymore the way they used to, but they're wrong and Elefante’s one of the artists with his quintet that's my evidence now lol. Check out The Earth Is on Fire, it’s my fav.
Melody Rules by Nicolai Dunger shows off Dunger’s talent songwriting skills in classic Americana and soul & folk. The songs are all merging together and making it a unique piece of album in Dunger’s already impressive discography. My favorite is What You See Is What You Get - I love the almost village-likeness the song has, like a community of people who get along got together for a session and recorded this song. Of course, maybe title-wise, this makes me say it's almost like a more optimistic version to The Rolling Stones' song You Can't Always Get What You Want. And name someone else who recently got compared to the Stones, … I’m waiting.
3. song releases 💿
Pale Blue Moon by SONOFDOV - Claiming this song to be the perfect soundtrack while rain pours down outside your window, the streets are empty and you have too much time to ponder on life’s highs and lows.
Mama by Elizabeth Sheppard - Last time, Elizabeth Sheppard shared her music with me, I played her music to my Mama as she had been a big Olivia Newton-John fan for her entire life. Right before I found Sheppard’s music, she had expressed me how much she wishes there would be someone out there like Olivia. More fitting now that Sheppard released a song titled Mama.
Caving In by Don May - Describing the song "with its raw energy and haunting resonance", May continues to inform me that the song was recorded in the original way without digital help and that warmth is audible. Give it a listen :)
Long Way Home by G. Michael Peters - Peters’ mix of country, folk and rock comes out in this track, I even hear blues in the rhythm, which merges perfectly with the rest. Using the phrase “being a long way home” is a very poetic way to sometimes only appreciate what you had once it’s gone.
4. recommendations 📼
These Are Burning Days by E.G. Phillips - A song inspired by the devastation caused by wildfires, this song has a lot of fire in itself. What first sounds like a ballad picks up slowly but surely into a rock anthem over the anger loss brings up.
Rose by IOTA - There's something mythical and dope about the Bristol-based band IOTA. The vocals that sound like they breathe emotive grit, guitars that evoke the courage in oneself, I can’t wait what the band has planned for the future.
Stuck Inside by René Moffatt - There was an easiness in Moffatt’s song that was inspired by the lockdown of the COVID times. For the song being about feeling stuck inside literally and figuratively, I found it interesting how optimistic it still is, or maybe that was just the pedal steel ;)
the end ✨
Thank you for reading the first weekly edition of our Groover submission! It was a mix between songs we still had accepted over the summer and as we’ll continue doing from here: fresh from the previous week. Because the first of everything is never perfect and took longer than planned, we’re actually back tomorrow with our regular scheduled edition of this week’s Groover submissions. Keep your eyes peeled in your inbox!
all links relating to Bonnie’s Legends:
you can find us on (Instagram) and (Substack)
This review is written by Bonnie Orbison. She is a published author and her latest release is the poetry collection Pretty Tennessee. If you enjoy her writing, more can be found on her online journal Howdy Bonnie! (poetry and personal diary essays) as well as with her fiction novels.
Here’s a poem of Bonnie’s:
