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.
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2010.