Serene Fiend’s Elegies and Effigies comes to life at the Replay Saturday night

Joel Bonner’s musical project, Serene Fiend, is many things and all of them are on display on the long-in-the-works and just released full-length, Elegies and Effigies.

When I last spoke with Bonner about the album, it was nearly two years ago, but it was pushed back due to a desire to have a proper release show.

Thankfully, this Saturday, Aug. 27, Serene Fiend will take the stage on the Replay Lounge patio for a rare nighttime show outside, along with fellow musical chaos-makers Ebony Tusks and Young Mvchetes.

“I called in some favors, you know,” Bonner explains over drinks at Lawrence Beer Company one evening. “Ebony Tusks was the one. I’d been talking to Marty [Hillard] for a few years at this point: ‘Yeah, I would love to play with you sometime,’ and we were talking and talking just like, ‘We’ll do it, we’ll do it,’ and it never was making sense. We were really starting to have this conversation right when the pandemic hit, so then it was just like, ‘Wow, fuck–now we can’t do anything.’”

As far as Young Mvchete, he says, it helps that those guys are all really tight with Ebony Tusks and between Bonner’s industrial interests and how the other two acts on the bill mix noise and with their punk approach to hip hop, it just made sense. Additionally, the appeal of a nighttime, outdoor show in the middle of downtown Lawrence on a Saturday is readily apparent to me, and I bring up the fact that this seems like a perfectly-timed end-of-summer blowout.

“The vibe is so different from an inside night show or an outside afternoon or evening, right?” Bonner agrees. “When you’re up front in the thick of it, it just feels like this awesome party, but there’s enough depth to the patio that you can go back. You can talk to people and you’re not like in the thick of everything, whereas inside–you have to go outside, otherwise it’s just loud, loud, loud, loud, loud.”

The performance of the songs from the just-released Elegies and Effigies would make for an interesting set on their own. As we sit at the bar, we run down the track listing and get a running commentary, track by-track. Opening cut “Monument” is, as Bonner himself puts it, “Such a mood setter.” It combines a Swedish death metal sound with video game soundtracks gone Gothic, featuring an organ and everything. The ending chord of that to goes straight into “Unto Myself,” which is the flag-bearing song at the album thanks to its opening lines, “I’m not afraid to die, I’m just afraid of loss/ My strength means nothing if I’m not tough enough.”

After that, we go straight into another “pop-centric, albeit very weird, track, ‘Don’t Want to Die,’ but it has pop hooks. The hook at the beginning keeps people engaged.” From there, we move into the second act, starting with “Manufactured” and according to Bonner, “That’s where it starts to get a little more conceptual, a little more brooding.”

After it moves through middle section, we get into the final third.

“I think ‘Something About Us’ brings us out of that and then ‘Happy to Be Here’ is kind of the statement right at the end that capitulates everything,” Bonner concludes. Elegies and Effigies does get dark and moody, but there’s almost an exuberance that comes through in every track, even when it’s at its bleakest. The overall feeling of listening to Serene Fiend’s latest is that you’re pushing towards something, not away from something.

“I think the narrative through-line of the album is change and looking forward,” Bonner confirms. “All of the self-reflection is contextualizing the looking forward. All of the dark, self-destructive narrative on there is about the past and looking forward and the changing of yourself is what keeps everything chugging along. It keeps that thread of hope inside this otherwise very melancholic line of lyrics.”

So, after two years of waiting, hoping, and wishing, Elegies and Effigies is now here, and there’s going to be a big show, so I ask Bonner what he’s feeling about it as we finish our beers and get ready to pay the tab. ls it excitement? Is it relief? Is it a combination of both where he’s just like, “Oh, thank God I get to do this and actually release the album”?

“It’s almost entirely relief,” Bonner laughs. “I’ll fully admit because it’s been on the burner for so long and these songs have been part of my personal identity for so long, I’m amazed I still love them as much as I do after all this time. It’s just a relief to get them out and to let people hear them.”

The excitement is the release show, Bonner explains, saying that they’re doing it entirely live. There’s an actual drummer alongside himself, Daniel Glascock on synths, and Sam Piper on guitars.

“I’m swapping in guitars on a few songs here and there, and it’s just gonna be a completely different experience for Serene Fiend live for this show,” concludes Bonner. “I’m very stoked for that.”

The release party for Serene Fiend’s Elegies and Effigies is Saturday, Aug., 27, at the Replay Lounge with Ebony Tusks and Young Mvchetes.