Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > September > 28 > Entry
ACL review: AA Bondy
When Alabama’s AA Bondy took the Dell Stage with nothing more than an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder and a harmonica fastened to his neck, the booming echoes of drumsets from other stages threatened to drown out his expertly finger-picked licks.
Bondy moved confidently through his Dylanesque folk tunes nonetheless, keeping the crowd’s chatter to a minimum and their response enthusiastic.
“I kind of feel like I should be out there among you,” he said a few songs in.
But he had no reason to worry about the performance lacking intimacy. The audience was transfixed by the Southwestern crunch of his slightly distorted acoustic riffs and the graceful imperfection of his crackling melodies.
The music was punctuated by his haunting revivalist poetics. Over the dreary drag of the minor chords in “Rapture (Sweet Rapture)” Bondy sang about trees swinging like hanging men, while in the upbeat romp “Vice Rag” he asked Jesus to take his sinner’s hand after singing that he’d drink dry an ocean full of whiskey.
Though Bondy has only released one album, 2007’s “American Hearts,” he played a surprisingly small number of cuts from it. The rest of the set was made up of equally impressive unreleased numbers. In one, he picked out a sunny, gospel-like progression while singing, “Dress well/Get pretty/You got to die.”
Judging from the strength of such songs, Bondy’s next album will be just as good or better than “American Hearts.”
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | | Categories: ACL 2008: Sunday, ACL Festival
