By Brian Tucker

David Dondero’s restlessness as a musician and a man could be seen as symptomatic regarding a new release so close on the heels of last year’s great # Zero with a Bullet. In an age where albums come infrequently by artists it’s refreshing to see a new release from one of them so fast.

Though mainstream or popular success has eluded the singer-songwriter it’s not for lack of a solid catalog of music. New album A Pre-Existing Condition (out Feb 12th on Ghostmeat Records) cuts another frayed notch in Dondero’s belt, another stop on the road in the American musical landscape. There are a few new songs, and versions other musician’s songs (Lowell George, Bob Dylan) in which Dondero makes them his own.

All but four songs on the album are covers, finding Dondero in a spare and energetic mood. For all the pointed vitriol in songs like “Boxcar” and “T for Texas,” Dondero sounds at ease, especially as he sings “Class war, class war, It’s the rich against the poor” on the album’s title and closing track. Perhaps the approach is like using a calm, whispered voice to a drunk to get them to pay attention. Dondero seems peaceful and focused, less weary for the road.

The spare quality is welcoming, the lean production a way to highlight the material along with Dondero’s soulful and subtle, gravelly voice. His choices for covers are not so obvious and the more well-known of them, “Willin,” popularized by Little Feat, seems fitting for his voice and style. Here Dondero takes the song and speeds it up a little, removing drawn out spaces in the original. It ends as fast as it begins.

A Pre-Existing Condition sounds like a plaintive, distant cousin to # Zero with a Bullet. For all its teeth the new album gnashes sweetly and warmly, merging from folk to country & western at times like highways and byways in the heartland.