Mon Rovîa “Bloodline”
Janjay Lowe has lived the kind of life that most of us have only seen in Oscar-bait movies (and not the kind where everyone plays fancy dress-up – the messy ones). The singer-songwriter, who goes by Mon Rovîa as a tribute to his native Liberia, was adopted out of that war-ravaged nation by an American evangelical family and shuttled between destinations as disparate as Montana and the Bahamas before eventually locating himself in East Tennessee. That brief biographical sketch only begins to hint at the intensely nomadic themes found across his debut LP, Bloodline, which finds the singer casting a critical eye on his now-home while maintaining emotional ties to the place that gave him life.
Bloodline begins with a quartet of songs set in Liberia. “Black Cauldron” leads with the flashback-inducing couplet “Whittle me/”Til I’m little me” and has Mon Rovîa mixing a less than idyllic childhood – “The kids are burning church next door” – with cries for comfort – “Mama tell me there’s a reason for living.” “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” begins with a sliver of a news report that indicates why young Janjay was removed from his namesake city, but Mon Rovîa himself sings of the multitude of tragedies he left behind – “No kind of amends/I buried my mom, I buried my dad, I buried a friend.”
The musical arrangements on Bloodline, which was largely produced by multi-instrumentalist Cooper Holzman, is a thoroughly modern style of folk, with synths meshing comfortably with acoustic guitar, banjo and ukulele and occasional choruses supplementing Mon Rovîa’s endlessly listenable vocals. The sweet-meets-bitter approach ends up adding extra bite to Mon Rovîa’s experiences and observations. “Whose Face Am I” has the singer, now living (but not nearly settled) in the United States, trying to piece together his own origin story, from voicemail fragments – “Your father is a Senegali/But he never knew that our mother was pregnant with you” – to trying to piece every scrap of knowledge into an identity – “Yearning in my soul/For a name I’ll never know.” And, while (somewhat) less violent, his ragged collage of new homes isn’t always welcoming. “Heavy Foot” is a deceptively uptempo indictment of the type of “leadership” – “Calling it a war not a genocide/Telling us it isn’t what it seems/Man that’s a different type of greed” – that’s just as dangerously unhinged in 2026 America as it was in the Liberia of Lowe’s youth.
So, with that bloody history and a rocky present, what keeps Mon Rovîa willing to move toward an unknowable future? On Bloodline, it’s two things – love and gratitude. “Field Song” is a percussion- and handclap-filled sort of modern day spiritual, with Mon Rovîa “working some things off” while trying to make his way toward happiness – “Honey I don’t mind the trouble/Long as it gets me where you are.” And album capper “Where the Mountain Meets the Sea” concludes with the singer embracing his place in the universe, despite all the evil he’s encountered – “And through all of man’s tirade/A few of us believe/In something beyond ourselves.” It might not seem like much, but knowing Janjay Lowe’s story – an immigrant’s story – reminds us that we were born here merely out of luck, while also admonishing us that our own work as Americans is not nearly done.
Song I Can’t Wait to Hear Live: “Somewhere Down in Georgia” – It’s the song on Bloodline that shades most toward folky country – wandering acoustic guitar, strings and moody tempo changes all play a role in laying out our tome of targeted violence: “Old ghosts still walk along/Cotton field turned parking lots/Steel and stone can’t hide these stains/History still grows in the cracks when it rains.”
Bloodline was produced by Cooper Holzman, Andre Samuel, Daylight, Eli Teplin, Tyler Martelli, Junia-T, Scott McCannell, Dom Whalley and Derek Karlquist, mixed by Dave Cerminara and mastered by Adam Ayan (immersive mixing by Alan JS Han and mastering by Matt Boerum). Songs written by Janjay Lowe, with co-writes going to Holzman, Teplin, Martelli, McCannell, Karlquist, Whalley, Eric Cromartie, Grant Averill, Ilsey Juber and Jonathon Lindo.
Mon Rovîa sang and played ukulele.
Go here to order/stream Bloodline (out January 9); https://monroviaboy.com/collections/all
https://monrovia.ffm.to/bloodline
Check out tour dates here: https://monroviaboy.com/pages/tour