Ray Bonneville is a singer-songwriter, which most who practice the trade shouldn't be, in my grumpy opinion. What gives Bonneville distinction, however, is an uncommon maturity and an equally rare rootedness, plus a distinctive voice (in the literal as well as figurative sense) and sound. That sound is usually a mid-tempo groove resting atop a bed of electrified blues and folk occasionally edging into a skeletal variety of rock.

Characterized that way, it may sound sort of monotonous, and it could be, but it isn't. In Bonneville's handling the music comes off as appealing, borderline consciousness-altering. He's mastered the elegant point. His words are riveting even when they're carrying an idea that others often cannot lift above the overworked. He comes across as a teller of truths, even when he's communicating a narrative that appears to be short fiction and intended to be nothing more (or, as he puts it on one cut of On the Blind Side, "a made-up story that's not true").

It's been a few years since he released a new recording. All the more reason for those who are drawn to his art to welcome this one. It isn't, in my estimation, destined for the top shelf -- unlike Goin' by Feel (2007) and Bad Man's Blood (2011), both of which I reviewed in this space and which are worth looking up -- but it's still pretty damn good. That ought to be more than enough to satisfy anyone who's drawn to his brand of performance, at once cerebral and grounded.

Bonneville's gift is such that even a song with so unpromising a title as "Never Get the Love Thing Right" proves unexpectedly sharp, evoking in me (and, I wouldn't be surprised, you) buried, heart-piercing memories. The concluding "Even with Time" returns to the theme with just as searing an effect. Though a romantic, Bonneville is in no sense a sentimentalist, which perhaps explains the unwasted thoughts and the flinty fidelity to lived-in realities.

Another notable talent is for the noirish tale, present more often in past work than in the present. Yet Blind Side does feature the crisply told drama "Night Cab," perhaps inspired by his early days driving taxi, perhaps by the fiction of James M. Cain, Jim Thompson and other hard-boiled crime writers, or both.

At nine cuts and 31 minutes, the album may feel a little abbreviated for those of us dinosaurs who continue to prefer to do our listening on CDs. On the other hand, it does have the virtue of leaving us wanting more -- as opposed, as is so often the case with lesser artists, to suffering too much. Before long, I'm sure, I'll be watching my mail in hopeful anticipation of the next.

[ visit Ray Bonneville's website ]