Evening Hymns are sung from the cathedrals of talls trees. They capture the spirit of moments, of friends around a bonfire on a foggy beach, the crunching of snowshoes in the silence of a winter night and memories of tribal boys growing up with pellet guns, fishing and handmade forts.

Songwriter Jonas Bonnetta comes out of the hinterland, along with a yelping group of banshees and some sweet-singing wood nymphs with Evening Hymns’ latest release Spirit Guides. Honing songs while cutting logs into planks in the sawdust and sunset of a clearing, Bonnetta has the ear of a woodsman: he knows when the saw blade is dull by the sound it makes against the wood. The album is full of wild sounds for the urban world, from the experience of seasons between two extremes: raucous touring nights with shouts in the streetlights, and in the woods, operating the sawmill he bought with his father a few years back. Somewhere between the two, Evening Hymns finds a rhythm for modern life.

Fiercely emotional and beautifully crafted, Spirit Guides draws a map of music as the crow flies.

-Meg Sheffield

Evening Hymns is the project of Jonas Bonnetta, a musician/artist/sawyer who grew up in the countryside not too far from Orono, Ontario and currently calls Toronto home. In 2007 he released the album Farewell to Harmony under his own name and the Let’s All Get Happy Together EP under the Evening Hymns moniker.

Spirit Guides has been recorded by James Bunton of Ohbijou, who has previously worked on albums by Forest City Lovers, Bellewoods and many of the selections from the Friends in Bellwoods compilations.

Out of this Spark released Evening Hymns’ debut full-length album Spirit Guides, in late Fall 2009.