Best of Year 2019
Folk-period Arthur Russell meets the softly apocalyptic hum of Low's Double Negative on Bondy's first album in near-on a decade. If you only know his previous work, you don't really know ENDERNESS. Don't come here looking for more of the same. Those previous albums weren't so much for me, but ENDERNESS is a different beast altogether. The alt-country/americana tropes of those records has been replaced with a restrained elegance, where the songs gently ebb and pulse in a near mediative way. Indeed, the three intrumentals are so minimal in their composition they bleed almost seamlessly into the other tracks. The true brilliance of ENDERNESS, though, resides in the near-endlessly quotable lyrics, that seem to aim a spiked jab at the modern world and scan as a hybrid expression of late-night Twitter confessional, YouTube comment wormhole and misanthropic declaration of cultural armageddon. ENDERNESS is a resting bitch face atop the Venus de Milo. Perfectly suited to my normal state.
