Sunday, February 27, 2011

PJ Bond - 22 April: Vienna, Austria (2010)



Judging by the title of this post you'd think that it is a gig review or something. Not quite correct, but then again it isn't far from the truth either. This is a writeup dedicated to PJ Bond's second release, recorded on April 22 in Vienna, Austria during a break on his tour. So yeah, one could definitely consider this like a special tour show just for the listener of this release.
PJ Bond is a singer/songwriter with an acoustic guitar in hand and quite a lot of emotions and energy coming out of his pocket. You can find his biography on "The Black Numbers" label site (found here), which you should check out since it is a very interesting read, but now I'll just give a quick glimpse of it. Coming from New Brunswick, New Jersey he was rooted in the diy basement scene for the majority of his time. When his first and probably most loved band parted ways, he was bouncing from band to band and while this experience was probably memorable, he missed something. He felt caged and longed for creating, touring and making friends along the way. After deciding to go solo and taking probably the hardest first step to do so, here he is today.
To be honest, prior to hearing from Phil, who is a member of the above mentioned label, I didn't know about PJ Bond and his music. The only bits of info I found out was from that biography I recommended for reading and this release. When you read it you see that PJ has quite a nice number of songs under his belt. I am yet to check out all his work, so for now I will be focusing just on this release.
Despite the fact that I really don't listen to this type of acoustic music a lot, which I should since it reminds me of my significant other, this "genre" is actually my soft spot. It is hard to explain, maybe because for some reason tunes like these aren't on my mind that much, but once I settle down and take a listen I usually end up melting from enjoyment. I presume that this is also why I find it hard to write about projects like these, since you don't need to talk about them. I mean, it is a singing guy with a guitar, what is there to write about, right? But that very simplicity is there just to clear the path to the heartfelt lyrics and the passion one man can dedicate to making music. You just need to sit down and absorb all these melodies and pure, raw emotions radiating from every possible second.
Hm, seems like I trailed of from actually talking about PJ's tunes. Well, all that is written above can be applied to him of course. When you put this into your player you get a dose of excellent tunes which will make your day better in an instant. PJ reminds me a lot of Eric Ayotte when it comes to lyrics. I did a review of Eric's gig with "Adorno" a few months back (you can read it here), falling in love with his performance and I think that the same would happen to me if I saw PJ play live. Simply put, there is really something driving and inspiring on this release and all you need to do is just let go and enjoy. There are six songs with around sixteen minutes of tunes here, with "Untitled (Robot Golf)" being my favorite. I am quite eager to take a listen to the rest of his work, since this grasped my heart and attention the first moment I pressed "play".
In the end, I hope that I managed to reflect my feelings about this release onto this writeup. PJ Bond makes amazing music and you should absolutely check out his work for yourselves. I really hope that he continues to journey on the path he took and that he finds all the happiness and success he could wish for along the way. You can get in touch with him on his myspace page here or even follow him on Twitter here. Enjoy!

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