Bondy’s Believers

by Weston Cutter

            Of the several pretty incredible albums that’ve already been released this year (top-of-head list of some incredible ones: Buckner’s Our Blood, Bon Iver’s Bon Iver, Wilco’s The Whole Love, Sarah Jaffe’s The Way Sound Leaves a Room, Blind Pilot’s We Are the Tide), the one I’m having the hardest time shaking is A. A. Bondy’s Believers. I also find it compellingly hard to talk about the album, just because the maybe common or easy buzzwords one’d perhaps use about it—or not even buzzwords, just connotations, typical mentions—don’t catch the thick weirdness of this album. Maybe that’s the best way to do the album, honestly: the two words I’d be tempted to use in describing Believers are “folk” or folkish and “Americana,” but those terms are pale misses on what this album fully contains. So here follows my takedown of the words I’m tempted to use.

 

Folk-ish. This album—like Bondy’s other stuff—is ultimately made of ingredients we’d recognize from elsewhere: guitar, piano, reverbed bass (worth noting that most everything’s electric on this, whereas on his earlier albums one could smell the spruce of the acoustics). Drums on these albums always seem like if they were to become a person they’d be a very nice, very relaxed dude. But, so: quiet, mostly. There’s a way these things are built (Buckner and Bon Iver, for what it’s worth, also have folk-ish tendencies and also both stretch the term to new shapes and potentials).

Here’s the thing though: Believers‘s first track, “The Heart is Waiting,” sounds like a hundred storms decided to come together and stuff themselves all into the same cloud, and then as if that cloud became an electric guitar. I don’t know how to talk well about this. The song doesn’t bang to a start and doesn’t snap to a shut, it rumbles in and out like the sound of the ocean as one drives past, and so because of that, at least for/to me, the whole album sounds like something that’s already out there, and that hitting play’s merely a matter of opening a door. And what’s out there?

The reviews I’ve read’ve mentioned dread. I suppose there’s that. What’s weird about Believers is that it’s so loaded with a thick music that the listener’s damn near bound to make associations: there’s heavy organ throughout, so it sounds sort of creepy or Neil Young-ish at points. There’s a plaintive stridency in Bondy’s voice—I can’t tell who I hear hints of. Ultimately, the album sounds like a soundtrack, though, is the thing, and it actually I think sounds like the perfect soundtrack to Drive, the recent Ryan Gossling flick.

Here’s the thing: that film’s got this 80′s synth-rock thing going on. It works well for the movie. I still have the sndtrk in my head at least every-other-day. But Believers would be the weirder, darker, more sparse version, and in that version there’d be no question about if the scorpion jacket was ridiculous or not. I’m not doing a good job with this. Onward.

Americana. This is weird. On “Drmz,” which Bondy admitted was titled that way just because he likes fucking with spellings, the opening’s so similar to a Velvet Underground song it’s almost funny—it sounds like it could easily lead to “Some Kinda Love” or “Jesus,” easy. “Rte. 28/Believers” could be an outtake from The River-era Springsteen. What I’m trying to say is you can see and hear grandpaternity in these tracks, almost instantly, and that lineage is what we’ve all now come to agree is “Americana” or something. Some essential river that flows through certain music. Plus just look at that cover! The fuzz, the solitude, the black-and-white.

But the truth is, those songs start one way but headfake fast. “The Twist” starts like the dirgiest 1982 Neil Young track, and when Bondy says “I hold the blade with the midnight arm,” you’re welcome to think the darkest thoughts you’re able to. Here’s the chorus

 

In ritual positions

I kneel before this love

Sometimes in benediction

a mouth to sing the flood

far away from the world.

 

You’re, again, welcome to get that as darkly as you’d like. I’ll submit that though the song may not make overt narrative sense, it works terribly well—he sings “I’ll hold the mirror for the ghost,” and the rightness of that image or idea totally, totally works.

Bondy’s been making good albums for awhile now (longer, even: Verbena, anyone?), but this, Believers, is something magic and different, darker by double and more lasting and unsolvable, than anything he’s yet tried. I haven’t been this hooked on an album in I don’t want to consider how long. Do yourself a favor. Get this now.

 

Catch Up Part Whatever

by Weston Cutter

Yes, this is lame and obnoxious, but I’m doing it: here’s microreviews for five books which I’ve read in the last 8+ months and have been meaning to review and there’s just not enough time, period. The candle flickers, the minutes speed by and it’s September’s end and these books deserve more than brief mention here but this will have to for now do. I’m really, really hoping that after putting these to bed and my backlog’s clear, I can get ahead with just full-on reviewing again (plus all the music! the new Blind Pilot! the new AA Bondy! the new Peter Wolf Crier! Buckner! Jayhawks! Holland! Jaffe! The mind positively reels).

The Authentic Animal by Dave Madden

First: Madden’s an absolute bad-ass as a narrative guide: dude’s open in the book’s first pages that he has no logical reason to be drawn to taxidermy, yet here he is, not just drawn but now having written the best (only?) book on the history and art and weird impulses that lead to preserving dead animals in life-like forms. The through-current here is a history of Carl Akeley, the grandfather of taxidermy, and The Authentic Animal‘d be worth if it if it were just Madden giving the Akeley bio. Instead, it’s this rich, very personal, very individual story about the urges to collect and display, and a surprisingly deep consideration of what authenticity means. It’s really a hell of a good read.

Bringing the Shovel Down by Ross Gay

I am a total asshole. I’ve had this book for I don’t know how long now, at least 6 months, and read it right on its arrival and loved it, thought then and still think it’s one of this year’s top 4 or 5 collections of poetry (Christ! I’ve had the book even longer: this thing came out in January!), and now here we are, woefully late. Gay’s poetry is fiercely amazing, and Bringing the Shovel Down is necessary reading if only for the trio of love poems (“Love, You Got Me Good,” “Love, I’m Done with You,” “Love, Here’s the Deal”), but of course there’s bigger and more ocean out beyond those: there’s alive music and there are odes and there’s everywhere this enthusiastic joy-seeking heart and eye set of Gay’s. The book’s magic. Should be in any year-end list.

The Wreckage by Michael Robotham

Let’s all raise a glass to how awesome thrillers are, and let’s keep the glass raised for those of us who have and are still coming late to the party. Robotham’s Wreckage is a fun-as-hell, multi-thread story involving the rebuilding Iraq and the secret pathways of money. Meaning, of course, it’s about how the world we live in is daily built by forces we’re suspiciously aware of at best. Be aware: this book’s on the dense end of things—it’s a thriller, sure, but it winds thickly through scenes, slowing it here and there—not that that makes it any less worth reading, though.

The Idea of America by Gordon Wood

2011′s blessedly not an election year, but I imagine most of us are already tired/frustrated with elected officials at present. Here’s the solution for your headache after listening to platitudes about what is or is not America, or American, all those ringingly empty li(n)es about who we are or should be: read Wood’s essays on the revolution. Read and be amazed and reminded that America’s stranger and more amazing than any pithy campaign point can possibly encapsulate.

The Takedown by Jeffrey Robinson

On page 18 of this book a woman’s described as being a vociferous reader, and that’s when I got up and came into the kitchen and moaned to my wife about the frustration when good stories get bogged down in over-excited, too-hot prose that doesn’t make sense. Look up the definiton of vociferous if you’re not clear, but trust me: the woman being described wasn’t being pegged as someone who enthusiastically read aloud. That’s the shit side of The Takedown: it’s too pulpy, and the sacrifices made for the sake of its pulpiness come in the form of corner-cut sentences, stuff that’s obviously being cranked down to elicit more oomph. If you can get past that sort of reading experience, The Takedown‘s fantasitc, a gripping story of a huge cartel’s, well, takedown. Just don’t write like Robinson after you’ve finished.