Lou Bond

Lou Bond

(Light In The Attic)

Record Review by Adam McKibbin

Reissues present an excellent opportunity to reconsider classics that were underappreciated the first time around or to discover bygone curiosities – but in today’s increasingly disposable climate, there’s added pressure to make a reissue seem worthy of the fickle listener’s time, as today’s 7.2 on Pitchfork is tomorrow’s apathetic shrug.  So to get a crowd in 2010 to care about a guy from 1974 singing soulful songs about the MLK and JFK assassinations, you better have a stone cold classic on your hands, right?

I hope not.  I hope not because Lou Bond’s self-titled album deserves to be heard by contemporary audiences, particularly retro-soul lovers – and I hope not because Bond’s masterpiece isn’t the equal of the genre giants.  You’re going to get some smooth romance and you’re going to get some searing social commentary, but you’re not going to get anything better than the best of Al Green or Marvin Gaye.  Now – that’s not an insult (nor is it a very fair measuring stick), but such is the way of promises and expectations with reissues.

Bond’s straight-up soul tracks (“Lucky Me,” “I’m For You”) are very warm and likable, albeit deferential to the prevailing trends of the genre of the time; the presence of a symphony and horn section add the requisite heft and drama.  Bond’s sociopolitical earnestness is one of his most distinguishing characteristics, as explored throughout the album, notably on “Why Must Our Eyes Always Be Turned Backwards.”  The subject matter is a little scattershot, but endearingly so (the same for how he chases a falsetto that seems a little beyond his control); it’s hard to tackle all of the world’s ills in a single song, but Bond sounds damned determined to do so, singing about Israeli unrest, Pakistan-vs-India, Vietnamese tensions, global unemployment, world hunger, political assassinations and, as the music is fading out, singing offhandedly about pollution and being scared to swim in the ocean.  It leaves the sense that he might be somewhere still singing the song, as the ills have just kept piling up faster than he can sing about them.

Bond’s other most recognizable trait is that sometimes words fail him altogether and he slides into the soul music equivalent of scatting, freelancing vocals that are way more about sounds than words.  This is most memorably on display on the massive 12-minute centerpiece “To the Establishment,” which has found contemporary life in the sampling vessels of Outkast, Brother Ali and Mary J. Blige.  It’s almost disorienting on first listen, and stands as a dramatic and necessary counterpoint to the more plaintive likes of “Let Me Into Your Life.”

In sum, Lou Bond may not be quite the classic it aspired to be, but it deserves its own space in the annals of socially conscious soul music, and earns its spot in your crowded music collection.  Credit is due to Seattle’s Light In The Attic Records, where a compelling catalog continues to pile up.