—————————————————— A.A. Bondy | Music | Houston | Houston Press | The Leading Independent News Source in Houston, Texas

A.A. Bondy

The past couple of years, ex-Verbena tunesmith August Arthur Bondy has been out there fine-­tuning a head-turning brand of American roots-type stuff. The recent When the Devil's Loose (Fat Possum), the follow-up to his wildly praised American Hearts album (rereleased by Fat Possum in 2008), has received similar critical nods for its warm, bluesy charms. The new album's got a timelessness to it, as Bondy pulls you in with tersely plaintive yarns of hard luck in the big, bad world, the predictability of loneliness and the faint promise of redemption. A truckful of subtle harmonic shifts colors his reverbed-piano and loosely funky acoustic-guitar songs, and makes a shrewd, shaded accompaniment to his understated voice. Bondy's got intriguing new ways of telling dusty old tales.
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Payne, John