Bondo

Bondo have good taste. The first song, ‘On The Cross’, starts out like Mogwai’s ‘R U Still In 2 It’, and the second, ‘Listen Back’, like Slowdive’s ‘Dagger’. The third, ‘Strummer’, could be an outtake from Slint’s Spiderland. In each case the resemblance is fleeting and the song ends up somewhere else, so Bondo are hardly short of ideas. The references just tell you what’s in their record collections.

So you’ll have a sense of the sound already: post-rock, slowcore, shoegaze. You can hear Tortoise, Codeine and Duster in there too. Some songs meander along glacially, while others, like ‘Brian Screams’, are propelled by guitars and loud vocals. All the name-dropping is only there to anchor you. This record is a great modern example of the sound, and the songs are expansive and easy to get lost in.

I said in September’s recap that I’d give this another couple of spins, and I’m glad I did: it opens up the more you play it. At the time I called it ‘slowcore-ish’, which is true as far as it goes.