It’s been a long time since a shaggy-haired Scott Bondy plied his trade with Alabaman alt-rockers Verbena, but over the course of two aching albums of spiritual, folksy, frontier Americana, the singer has forged an entirely new path that seems far closer to his heart than that original band project.
So much so that expectation is rather high for his third album as a solo artist, “Believers“. Both his first two albums were sparse, near-puritanical affairs, with limited instrumentation allowing the unquestionable vocal gifts of the singer to deliver darkly ominous parables from some imagined western frontier. Preachers, lost souls and whiskey seemed to flow from both “American Hearts” and “When the Devil’s Loose”, but Bondy’s gift for a melodic hook made them thoroughly accessible too.
The first track on the new album, “The Heart is Willing” suggests a more rounded sound on album three. Its quietly throbbing, pulsing beat is like that of a malignant spirit on the loose, vaguely ominous but seductive, and notably it’s more uptempo than most of Bondy’s previous solo work. It’s a hypnotic introduction, for sure, and one that is repeated periodically across the album.
“Down in the Fire (Lost Sea)” emerges within ten seconds as a potential stand out track of the new album. A beguiling ballad, its dusky sounds encapsulate all that appeals about Bondy’s work. It is laced with mood, but spared from misery by the cracked soul of the singer’s compelling voice. Making bleak songs sound so rich is an art that Bondy has an increasing knack for mastering.
That this is another album of drifting, bewitching tone is borne out by track three “Skull and Bones”. Elements of that broader sound emerge here, some background synthesized layers adding richness to the landscape of this mid-tempo elegy. “Surfer King” seems to take its cue from old soul, just vocal and guitar and delicate subtlety of production harking back to the previous albums. Bondy’s songs are not overtly complex affairs, but simplicity as enthralling as this is very easy to listen to and exceptionally hard to achieve. Again on “Hiway/Fevers” a simple bass line and waves of drifting guitar make for a swaying slice of meditative bliss and the new, broader sounds work in a delightfully evocative way against the singer’s voice – this is music to complement contemplative landscape shots of some dusty wilderness or soundtrack the sort of bleakly hopeless sprawl of a Cormac McCarthy novel.
“Drmz” is, even by Bondy’s downbeat standards, a bleak little number, all hope seemingly wrung out of it by a vocal that seems to have been drawn hand over hand from a well of desperate melancholy. Certainly, Bondy’s albums are rarely cheery affairs, but the mood is especially dark this time around. “The Twist” doesn’t so much lift the mood as make it more thrusting in its reach, an upshift in tempo, more malevolent bass and a full band driving home the point. If you’re expecting relief from “Rte. 28/Believers”, think again, before album closer “Scenes From a Circus” (you guessed it) rounds off the affair in appropriately sad fashion but with a wonderfully spacious beauty.
So, one listen in, and AA Bondy has certainly delivered an album with a lovely, but heartbreakingly sad tone. For the most part, this is a slowly brooding epic, the tempo occasionally increased, the sound certainly wider, more cinematic than previously, but the overall Bondy mood, arguably his greatest gift, remains intact, even enhanced here. There is no immediate mood lifter here, no “The Pines Are Dancing” or “Lover’s Waltz” this time around, but this feels like an album to absorb yourself in, one whose dark pleasures will reveal fully over a period of time. Spread the word, the weary-souled preacher of Alabama is back in town.
“Believers” is released on Fat Possum records on 13 September
