The title of Vic Bondi’s 27th release, Vic Bondi And His Issues, might come off as self-deprecation but in reality, it’s closer to diagnosis. Nearly four decades after helping define politically literate American hardcore, Bondi is less interested in nostalgia than in accountability: personal, historical, and national. Asked what keeps him making music, Bondi kicks it straight: “A beating heart, a tin ear, and raw stubbornness.” That might sound like a joke, but there’s a truth to it. Stubbornness, in Bondi’s case, has always meant refusing to let power go unexamined. Written in Seattle and recorded over two days at Soundhouse Recording Studio, both the sound and the lineup are lean and deliberate. Immediate, enthralling, and crafted with razor precision, it’s name (bestowed by Jello Biafra) winks at confession while pointing squarely at the culture. Bondi’s political lens was formed early. The son of a U.S. Navy captain, he moved twenty-two times bef