AJJ // Sean Bonnette Bares All While Discussing The Groups New Album; Intimate Personal Confessions And His Underlying Appreciation For His Mother.

Since forming in 2004, cult-followed folk-punk’s AJJ have consistently woven doom-laden prophecies and post apocalyptic themes into all facets of their music.

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Their album covers quite often depict stark illustrations of cataclysmic events, and their lyrics are known for tackling themes of shyness, poverty, humanity and politics.

So if they wanted to make an album about the dehumanising horrors faced during the COVID pandemic, they could have quite easily. They were pretty much set up for it, with their eerily prescient 2020 album Good Luck Everybody more or less prophesying the outbreak of a pandemic right before it happened. 

And from the outset, their eighth studio album, Disposable Everything, looked ready to play the part of a sequel. From the skeletal remains graffitiing a baron landscape on its front cover, to the clear sense of helplessness evoked by its title– it seemed to be an easy continuation of its predecessor’s resigned narrative.   

Instead, Disposable Everything sees the groups guitarist and vocalist Sean Bonnette look inwards, writing about his own experiences of grief and the timely, yet enriching process of reaching the other side. 

But that didn’t come easily, with Bonnette crediting the album’s producer David Jerkovich for giving him the much needed push to open up and share his more personal work.

“A lot of the confidence that we got putting out this record came from David Jerkovich. He’s like the greatest cheerleader you would ever have for your band. He pulled songs out of the trash, held them up to me and said “no, no– these are good, you need to play these.”

With a lot of our decisions, and a lot of the songs on the album, I simply wanted to honour my mum
[ Sean Bonnette – AJJ ]

“Candles of Love was one of those. That was one of the songs that wasn’t taken out of the trash, but like, plucked out of my personal life. It’s just like a little ditty that I would sing to my wife every time the battery operated candles would flick on, because they flick on at the same time every day. And then David was hanging out at my house and I played it and he was like, ‘what was that?” 

Talking on the albums personal subject matter and the difficulties of opening up in such a vulnerable manner Bonette expressed,

“With a lot of our decisions, and a lot of the songs on the album, I simply wanted to honour my mum,” he reflects.

“The song ‘A Thought Of You’ is kind of brutal lyrically, but also it ends with, to me, the best love letter that I could kind of musically muster for my mom– which was to have a prog-rock freakout at the end,” he laughs.

“My mom was also a musician. She was a very amazing singer, and she had incredible ears and a really good sense of pop and hooks and, and taught me more than anyone else about songwriting.”

“So there’s little things like the synthy bits on ‘Moon Valley High’ and stuff that was all kind of a love letter to my mom, like, meant to honour her. And I think–you know, I would hope that she’d be proud of the album and psyched on it.”

“The last time she saw the band play, we had a really good moment after the show. Small Red Boy was the song that she really liked.” he pauses, reminiscing on the memory, before concluding with,  

“And to paraphrase in somewhat of a vague way, we spoke about– ‘it wasn’t always easy for you as a kid and I hear that and understand that now.’ And, I don’t know– it was like an acknowledgment of some kind, and one that was really necessary and cool.”–I think my big sadness is that– I just wish she could hear the record. I think she’d be really proud of it.”

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