A soft and soul-stirring reckoning, “Start Again” finds The Bones of J.R. Jones embracing pain, perseverance, and the quiet power of renewal in a breathtakingly intimate ballad off his forthcoming album, ‘Radio Waves.’
Stream: “Start Again” – The Bones of J.R. Jones
There’s something quietly shattering – and soul-stirring – about starting over.
In The Bones of J.R. Jones’ new single, renewal doesn’t come as a fiery explosion or some sweeping, cinematic shift; it’s something softer and more tender. It hurts. It aches. It flickers and fights for air like a porch light on its last breath – but it’s there, glowing all the same. A visceral, brooding reckoning with human fragility, perseverance, and possibility, “Start Again” is a breathtaking release of vulnerability and grace – a spine-tingling song that reckons with the damage we carry, and the quiet strength it takes to begin again.
This isn’t just a song about fresh starts – it’s a cathartic reminder that we’re allowed to grieve what was and still move forward. That we can hold love and loss, regret and hope, in the same pair of trembling hands.
All my lines
Run through you
Your Heart of gold
Your heart of gold
The broken chair
Broken tongue
Unsteady hands
Our intentions hung
Fold us down
into this land
Close our eyes
Start again
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Start Again,” the third single off The Bones of J.R. Jones’ upcoming album Radio Waves (out June 20 via Tone Tree Music). Following the release of “Car Crash” and “Shameless,” “Start Again” strips everything back to its rawest essentials – just Jonathon Linaberry and a piano, searching for light in the darkness. What begins as an intimate, haunting ballad swells into a sweeping, emotionally charged reverie that captures the totality of the human spirit. Clocking in at just over three minutes, the song somehow holds lifetimes – full of longing and forgiveness, pain and promise, memory and hope.
“All my lines run through you,” Linaberry sings in the opening verse, his voice heavy with weight. “Your heart of gold… the broken chair, broken tongue, unsteady hands… our intentions hung.” There’s a poetic sparseness to these lyrics, a lyrical restraint that mirrors the patterns we fall into in life and love – the unspoken hurts, the familiar fights, the quiet returns. “Fold us down into this land / Close our eyes / Start again,” he repeats in the chorus, as if willing renewal into existence.
“There’s a repetition and restraint to our lives and relationships that I think we all subscribe to to survive,” Linaberry tells Atwood Magazine. “We fall into patterns of comfort and norm. Healthy or unhealthy it doesn’t really matter. The usual arguments. The usual blowbacks. The mutual attempts to understand the other’s side: That’s what I was trying to express in ‘Start Again.’”
These late nights
The radio hums
Don’t turn the dial
Let the night play on
Back porch light
Flickers at the moon
I’m at the kitchen table
Licking my wounds
That deep yearning for understanding and repair permeates the entire performance. The song builds slowly and subtly, adding layers of soft harmonies, ambient textures, and a muted backbeat that carries the weight of everything unspoken. Linaberry’s delivery is achingly human – never dramatic or overwrought, but full of lived-in pain and love.
Fold us down
into this land
Close our eyes
Start again
If “Start Again” is the song’s heartbeat, its music video is its soul in motion. Shot by Mike D’Alton (Seba Safe) over the course of a recent European tour, the video stitches together candid behind-the-scenes moments, performance footage, and glimpses of life on the road with warmth and vulnerability.
“The talented Mike D’Alton (Seba Safe) shot this footage over three weeks of touring Europe,” Linaberry shares. “I was lucky enough to spend the better part of every day with Patrick Blaney, Conchur White and Mike as we managed to not get lost, sick or arrested: Only one of us got punched (that’s a win). Any touring musician will tell you it takes a special crew to hold it together on tour. I know there are probably thousands of touring videos out there, but when I look at this one, I really do feel the love – the relentlessness, the exhaustion, and the pure joy and chaos of a successful show.”
It’s that lived-in truth – both on the screen and in the song – that makes “Start Again” hit so hard. Linaberry isn’t sugarcoating what it means to fall apart, or what it takes to rebuild. He’s simply telling it straight – quietly, reverently, and with poetic force.
The Bones of J.R. Jones has always straddled the edge of the old and the new – drawing from the past without romanticizing it, channeling timeless emotion through modern, minimalist expression.
With “Start Again,” he continues to carve out his space as one of today’s most compelling and honest voices in indie Americana. There’s no resolution at the end of the track, no promise that things will be okay. Just the feeling of two tired souls closing their eyes, pressing their foreheads together, and trying – maybe for the hundredth time – to meet each other in the middle.
“Back porch light flickers at the moon,” Linaberry sings near the end, sitting at the kitchen table, licking his wounds. “Fold us down into this land / Close our eyes / Start again.”
And in that moment, it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve broken down before. You believe it – the possibility of healing. The power of beginning again.
Watch the “Start Again” video exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and stay tuned for more from Radio Waves, out June 20 via Tone Tree Music!
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© Christian Harder
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