"Ooh la la, swastika" intones
A.A. Bondy during the chorus of "Diamond Skulls," the murky opening cut on his fourth solo album,
Enderness. It comes among a litany of other disparate lyrical fragments that, strung together as they are, form a disheartening pastiche of dark contemporary gibberish. Eight years on from the atmospheric indie blues of 2011's
Believers,
Enderness is the first of
Bondy's albums to rely on tools like drums machines and synthesizers, yet he wields them in a subtle enough way that will still be familiar to fans who have enjoyed his more organic output. What is more striking about this album is its overwhelmingly somber and detached tone. Entirely written, played, engineered, and mixed by
Bondy at his home, the album has an insular feel with songs like "In the Wonder" and "#Lost Hills" seeming to leak out of blue laptop light with a kind of cold, untouchable beauty. Of its ten tracks, three are drowsy ambient instrumentals while the rest crawl along under
Bondy's austere but often exquisite poetry that is occasionally peppered with out-of-context Internet phrases and the pop-cultural language. As bleak a listen as it is,
Enderness is an affecting piece of art reflective of its time, and the fact that
Bondy's house burned down the day after he finished recording it almost feels like some inevitable if unfortunate occurrence.