3 out of 5

Label: Sub Pop

Producer: Brad Wood

In a haze of mumbling and fuzz and tinkling glasses, Brad Wood delivers his most nuanced production work ever, elevating ‘Bunny Gets Paid’s more confused moments – of which there are many – into surreal trips of noise and blues and folk.  Through this filter, Red Red Meat bring out their most uneven material, a crossing-over point between their beer-hall rock origins and the kitchen-sink strum of the Califone-to-come.  It’s almost blissfully genius at moments, as Tim Rutili does his haunting croaked vocals thing (which you can never understand and which can’t be sung along to – only hummed with, one or two syllables or odd, dreck-draped imagery popping out of his marble-mouthed poetry) over smashes of guitar and beaten drums, or whispering his words atop wandering strings and a slow strum… but then the song fades out or just cuts out, and the group reaches for something more… not really knowing what, it seems, and resulting in several tracks worth of distortion that blend together, despite the recording bringing out so many delicious layers.

Things start off backwards with ‘Carpet of Horses,’ the group shuffling through a toolbox of broken instruments while the tune gets together.  It’s a bold way to start things after the more raucous openers found on the self-titled and ‘Jimmywine,’ but it works well here as Rutili and crew delay and delay and delay the song’s swing… effectively introducing you to some of the tricks the group attempts later on in the album.  Splitting things up more effectively would’ve served the disc well, as ‘Carpet’ jumping into the rocker ‘Chain Chain Chain’ is a miracle, and makes the juxtaposition of the songs stronger than either separately.  But followup ‘Rosewood, Wax, Voltz + Glitter’ is another high-octane song that misleads you into expecting more of the same.  It doesn’t help that this is one of their best bluesy jams, with some sick recording smashing things in the background and making the drums sound like someone is falling on the kit while they’re playing (in the best way possible), bass and guitar strings snapping with each open chord scratched from the instruments (again… best way possible).  ‘Buttered’ slows things down and ‘Gauze’ fuzzes things up, again paired well as opposite sides of a moody coin, but we’re starting to get into murkier territory… and indeed, here is where ‘Bunny’ steps off the plank for a handful of tracks.  They’re not bad at all, they’re just muted, with elements flaring up and fizzling out without much care for verse-chorus-verse.  Rutili’s monotone doesn’t help here, unless you accept it as another drone instrument.  These songs are probably most indicative of how Califone would start out (before becoming more traditional folk), but RRM wasn’t willing to push the electronic edge at this point, so the songs still willfully hold on to a bit of blues and rock, perhaps to their detriment.  They are interesting, but difficult to hold in memory against the earlier half of the disc.

Things are bookended well, though, with ‘Taxidermy Blues In Reverse’ returning to the explosiveness of earlier tracks and having an awesome title to boot, before closing it out with a surprisingly sweet and straight-forward acoustic shortie – ‘There’s Always Tomorrow,’ an interesting view through which to consider the proceeding recording.

For followers of this group and its bandly evolutions, ‘Bunny’ is an important album.  But as with many transition albums, its hard to recommend it to a casual listener, who’d do better going either one album forward or back from this.