Last night, aDawgg and I were talking about how The Von Bondies have kind of disappeared since Jack White busted in Jason Stollsteimer’s face. Maybe if he’d just been quiet about it, things might be different for The Von Bondies now. (I’m not saying it’s good idea to be bashing people’s faces up, but Stollsteimer showing off his wounds to the press didn’t really get him anywhere, did it?)

Anyway, for this post, none of that is really relevant anyway. It looks like The Von Bondies will finally have some sort of new release coming up in a couple of weeks, as well as an album sometime later, and I’ll be curious to hear what they sound like with the gals replaced by several new members. But no matter what happens in their future, Lack Of Communication, their debut album, will always be their masterpiece to me. It perfectly captures that sound that I found so exciting in the early 00s and made me look at music in a new way. It took all kinds of old bluesy influences and made them rough and raw and dripping with attitude, but still kept a sense of timelessness. There’s just no denying that this whole album is a classic snapshot of an exciting time and place - and since most of us couldn’t just pop along to Detroit to hear it all for ourselves, it let us experience that feeling in our own bedrooms.

   The Von Bondies - Cass And Henry