Sounds From The Junkshop #96 - The Von Bondies

 

"Life was fun when we were young..." - The Von Bondies - C'mon C'mon

I won't lie, when it came down to revisiting the Von Bondies for this column I didn't exactly have high hopes. Similar to the Vines, I think that the fact that they burned themselves out very rapidly after their brief spell in the spotlight and basically ended up being a one hit wonder over on these shores with C'mon C'mon which reached the Top 20 and which they never really came anywhere near bettering chart-wise. Plus there was the fact that lead singer Jason Stollsteimer never really came across as being particularly likeable in interviews (he'd come up through the same Detroit garage scene as Jack White so maybe it's something in the water over there, I dunno) and a lingering suspicion that my like of the band might have been more down to the fact that I desperately fancied their cool-as-ice vixen of a guitarist Marcie Bolen than anything to do with their actual music and I was prepared to write this as a "cuh, what was I thinking eh?" piece and blaming it on the amount of booze and, well, other stuff that I was ingesting at the time.

Boy was I wrong - within five minutes of putting the group's Pawn Shoppe Heart album on my stereo for the first time in many years I found myself leaping around the front room thrashing away at my air guitar like a teenager again. It's always nice when SFTJ throws up little unexpected surprises like that. So let's rewind and look at this story properly then, shall we?

Similar to Electric Six last week, the Von Bondies were another Detroit group who were given a leg up by Jack White - as I've mentioned, the ersatz garage bluesman had come up through the Detroit scene together with Stollsteimer and he'd even produce the band's rabid garage punk debut Lack of Communication in 2001. That one I missed but I did see the band at the Leeds Festival in 2003 when they well and truly kicked loose with a storming set of garage rock, Stollsteimer the whirling dervish in the middle and Bolen and bassist Carrie Smith the two ice maidens either side of him.

However, even by this stage, the band were starting to bite the hand that fed them - Bolen had been dating Jack White and the two would break up acrimoniously which led to White and Stollsteimer starting to exchange barbs in the press - Stollsteimer accused White of messing up the production on Lack of Communication and the White Stripes man fired back accusing the Von Bondies of being the resident troublemakers in the otherwise harmonious Detroit scene. It all kicked off properly at the end of that year when the two got into a knock down drag-out brawl at an album launch party with both getting their facial features somewhat rearranged.

Ultimately though, the group had already got their major label deal in the bag by this point so the publicity actually benefitted them and when C'mon C'mon was released as the lead-off single to Pawn Shoppe Heart, it saw them chalk up a Top 30 hit on both sides of the Atlantic. And when the album itself landed, it deservedly got pretty good reviews across the board.

Like I say, I was genuinely surprised when listening back to Pawn Shoppe Heart while writing this article just how well it's aged. This is garage punk but very much with the emphasis on the punk and a swaggering rawness that the Strokes could only have dreamt of. Songs like No Regrets and Been Swank (a dig at Ben Swank from fellow Detroit natives the Soledad Brothers) just drip with a sneering venom - yes, it's easy to cast Stollsteimer as a spoilt brat throwing his toys out of the pram but the sheer malevolent glee which he lays down his diatribes with makes this a properly fun listen - there's a real schadenfreude powering it along which is pretty much irresistible. It's pretty much an album to listen to while you're thinking of methods of vengeance on that person you REALLY hate and it's great stuff. Elsewhere, Bolen and Smith's Not That Social might just be the greatest song that the Breeders never wrote.

Unfortunately despite the acclaim across the board for Pawn Shoppe Heart, the Von Bondies pretty much arrived on the scene just as the whole garage rock explosion was starting to crash and burn and their spell in the big time was brief with the album stalling at a disappointing number 36. When Tell Me What You See was released as the second single from it, it just missed the Top 40 and I'm not sure if this was the cue for WEA, their label, to get cold feet but suddenly their mentions in the press started to dry up very quickly. The group would be gone from Warners by the end of the year with Smith and Bolen both bailing from the band in quick succession in 2005-06.

By the time Jason had put a new line-up together and released a follow-up, it was 2009, the musical landscape had changed beyond recognition and it sunk without a trace. Matters weren't helped by the fact that the album in question, Love, Hate And Then There's You, saw the band going for a more mid-paced electro sound which just didn't pack the punch their previous stuff had at all. The group had gone back to the indies and I'll hold my hands up and say I missed this album altogether at the time and only even realised it was out about a year or two later. I did listen to it but I think my reaction can best be summed up in one word - meh. By 2012, the band were no more.

It's not quite the end of the story - the Von Bondies did reform last year with Stollsteimer, original drummer Don Blum and the two girls from the Love, Hate... era Christy Hunt on guitars and Leann Banks on bass. A tour was planned but fell through due to Covid but a couple of singles have crept out this year so touch wood the reunion's now back on. I'd like to think that Stollsteimer has another album in him of the same quality as Pawn Shoppe Heart was and if you missed this first time out or wrote this band off as another bunch of garage rock rich brats then it's worth revisiting - certainly it's got a vitriolic strut to it that sets it well apart from some of the more anodyne bands in this movement and deserves the status of being a bit of a lost classic.