Everything

Everything is the debut album of Bnny (formerly Bunny), an indie rock outfit built around the personal songwriting of Chicagos Jess Viscius. While working as an art director, she first took up songwriting when someone left a guitar at her apartment. Over the course of several years, working with minimal chords, she penned songs inspired by a challenging relationship, then about processing the death of her partner. Examples of each are gathered on the 14-track Everything, which was recorded as a five-piece that includes Viscius twin sister, Alexa (Glyders), and produced by Dehds Jason Balla. Featuring a distinctly intimate, shadowy, surf-infused sound, Everything may be dimly lit and occasionally grief-stricken, but it avoids being persistently maudlin. First-half tracks like Promises and Take That Back border on catchy retro-rock, and the latter song teases more than complains when it claims, You only haunt me when youre down and I only want you when youre not around. The album opens, however, with the traumatized Ambulance, a slow, haunted prelude that has Viscius closing her eyes whenever she sees an ambulance (If I cant see, then no one dies). That songs whispery vocals -- a trait of the whole album -- are especially subdued. More laid-back songs, like Sure and Blind, fall in the sad-and-sexy territory of Cowboy Junkies Sweet Jane (Bnny cites the Velvet Underground as a primary influence), while the downcast Not Even You laments how memories are a poor substitution for the real thing, and the soporific Little Flower, with its brushed-snare accompaniment, dwells on death and rebirth. Everything is bookended by the also-devastating Voice Memo, which leaves listeners with a couple-harmonized early song sketch. ~ Marcy Donelson