Blasting out of a head of long red hair propped up on a 5-foot-who-knows-what frame come these soulful songs! Sometimes the song itself gets lost when you’re trying to figure out how a big bad bluesy amplifier got stuck inside her sleeveless crochet sweater.
The frame and the voice belong to Natalia Bonfini — Eastham’s own, Nauset Regional alum, and one of the top 50 Americans it was acceptable to Idolize. She’ll play acoustic shows at a local burger spot or the refurbished surf-punk hangout OR she’ll load up for bear and parade out the full band in an airplane hangar at the Chatham Airport or on the wooden pier planks over the Bay in Wellfleet (FRIDAY! FRIDAY! FRIDAY! 18 July 2025, 7p).
The first, strongest impression is the range and power of her voice box. That’s first. Could be a Pink Floyd cover, could be an Elton John tune — hopefully you’re treated to her sometimes show-closing spin on Biz Markie’s second-best song — or you’ll draw the right straw and Blackstreet will come to your table; truthfully, for real, no diggity.
After the voice? Is it the groove, the words, the melody? The debate rages in the bubbles my Pilot V5 carries around in its chamber. We’ll square up and commit: it’s likely that most people are words people — so the words want to win.
As much of a Roger Waters fan as one can be — or Elton, or Chappell Roan — once I was sitting at the Brickhouse and heard one of Natalia’s original songs. All the influences the band her father drummed for dissipated and we got a hurt, stinging, pissed-off song that made one of her other influences clear to me. I honestly wasn’t hearing Alanis Morissette by halfway through the second verse — I was sure she was doing a Phish-Halloween-show stunt and covering West Village Bob Dylan circa ’66. Sooner or later it’s the fourth time around… how does it feeeeeel? (In the finest Royal Albert Hall voice.)
If her covers are warm water springs to laze around and bask in — sometimes singing along to — then her originals are arrows fresh from the quiver, and they find whatever bullseye she’s spying.
Alone
Hands it out to some poorly behaved swine who didn’t know how to act and pushed his prize away. Natalia rips the film of civility away and casts the most polite and well-mannered curses deep into what I’m sure the offending party would consider the most tender soft tissue. Not wished well. There is no on-ramp to the high road in sight and, because of that exact unapologetic approach, she radiates pure honesty to the point of universality. What’s not universal is the ability to clearly articulate the hurt, the pain, and the fuck you that’s necessary to step over and away from the field of us who may remember the tender moments and vulnerability but don’t possess the craft to commit it to ember.
So she just says fare thee well — and not in Jerome’s voice. The tenor is strictly Zimmerman.
Showtime
I don’t know how this song will sound from the studio, but the version I heard live in the fluorescent stacks had a shoulder-bopping blues open that put me back flat on the soles of my feet. This is where Natalia harnesses the groove and pulls off legitimate raconteuring. She set up the song, which tells the story of her Top 50 run on American Idol in 2020/2021, in what sounded like impressionistic language. Could be because she’d given us a very detailed rundown of that process a couple of days earlier. The song is a fantastic backstage lens into what’s likely the last of the Entertainment Factory remnants — Tin Pan Alley for the Snookie set.
The bootcamp trauma-bonding that grows when you’re up long hours, not eating well, drinking water even less, all while putting your best camera-face on and being ready to perform when the red light comes on. And they set it up so there’s a red light over your head at all times. However stressful that sounds, it’s more stressful to live, but Natalia says without hesitation it was an incredible experience — because to break through into show business will require those tendencies innately, so they can be honed and finely combed.
Making it work as a musician collecting bookings up and down Route 6 is not easy when the halcyon days of July & August decamp for the Fellini winds of January. The high-pressure crucible Natalia navigated then puts a lot of what she’ll experience out here in manageable perspective, no doubt.
Hallelujah
There is no irony in the title — this song is full of the true memory of unabashed joy and the pollen of love. It’s a call-and-response tune and her ease and comfort with the audience (raconteuring!) brings this song to its height. It’s the other side of Alone’s coin — it could have been written in the same fever, just with a different color pen. She allows herself to remember and feel the love she shared with this lost spirit (yes, this song brought back the perfume of all of my exes in a rage), allows herself to admit missing them, but, thankfully, dwells on the most positive of all the memories — the ones the therapists tell you to forget — the ones that happened once every nine days or so.
Those moments happened and, while Natalia won’t let us forget there’s a deeper sadness underneath it all — for the ending was the ending is the end — she sprinkles dust over the wound for a moment and brings the sweetness of the blood to the front.
The lasting impression that showed up in smeared ink twice: after these songs, I want to know the whole of each story. There’s no doubt that deep narrative threads and late nights and beach trips and drunken holiday spats and the make-up after are all laced in here somewhere. That’s success for a songwriter and storyteller as I see it.
Jagged Little Thrill
This was not meant to be an original track review (especially from mostly single listens and live at that), but that’s where the natural path led. This was supposed to be — and still is — a reminder that our friend Natalia is performing on the Wellfleet Pier at the Harbor Stage with the full band this Friday night, 18 July 2025 from 7–9p. If you haven’t seen her live, we recommend it. If you have seen her live, you may not have heard the new songs — so we recommend it. Call out for Hallelujah and see what you get. She may use that one to send her old closer home in a jet.
We’ll all wait now until the fall or winter when hopefully we’ll get Natalia’s new album — and we’ll hope the new songs you’re now in love with are on there for your listening pleasure.
A Word About the Businesswoman & Bonfini Entertainment
Did you know Vincent Gallo, acclaimed model, actor, and art-filmmaker, made a fortune flipping houses? Do you know T-Pain makes the vast bulk of his income streaming on Twitch? Did you know Natalia Bonfini has a booking agency for venues looking for talent, for weddings needing bands, for the overly right-brained performers craving left-brain structure? Bonfini Entertainment. If you’re a performer or a venue — have a look. She may be able to push things along.
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