“One true sentence”. That’s what Ernest Hemingway was aiming to write during his stay in Paris in the Roaring Twenties of the previous century. The music of singer/songwriter Paul Bond is greatly inspired by Hemingway’s philosophy and artistic vision: his music reminds listeners of white crests on the waves, the smell of burnt leather, and the crushing of shoes on a mountain path.
In 2014, Bond started his band Dandelion, for which he wrote all the songs and lyrics. They went on to release the EP The All Year Round (2014), and their debut album Everest (2016). Their second album, titled Laika, Belka, Strelka (2019), received warm and confident reviews from the Netherlands and beyond. It was praised for its unique style — which Dandelion termed country funk — and its conceptual approach and theme: the Russian space dogs of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Bond’s travels to America and Canada, and an English Literary MA degree resulted in an obsession with text and literature, but besides this, any listener will acknowledge Bond’s preoccupation with writing solid pop songs, melodies that are compact and memorable. Important musical sources of inspiration are Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Iron & Wine. Literary influences are, among others, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams.
