Album Review – Bunny by Beach Fossils (2023) (Bayonet Records)
After a six-year hiatus, during which their last studio album, the superlative Somersault from 2017, has just about managed to prise itself off your playlist, New York’s Beach Fossils are back with another soundtrack to your summer that perfectly evokes the seasons ability to make you lounge about in all the most glorious places. Heat, haze, and the reveling in deliberate lethargy have always been this act’s jangly, melodic modus operandi, and Bunny never threatens to deviate from this most perfect template.
If there are subtle differences, it could be that Bunny is more meticulous and more inclined towards a muted commerciality that opens up an extra sense of accessibility compared to previous releases. As such, Run To The Moon, Anything Is Anything, and Seconds would be positively psyche-tinged guitar-pop if it were not for the Beach Fossils propensity to fly so consistently through a beautiful sense of ethereal. Hooks, chiming / jangled riffs, and even the usage of once-forsaken choruses are all suddenly and endearingly prevalent.
Even Sleeping On My Own, Don’t Fade Away, and Waterfall, which are probably the best examples of their signature sound, feel like something of a celebration of their yesteryear aesthetic, with their space-laden isolated atmospheres now more obviously augmented by the most stunning and most subtle of jangle-gaze riffs that are now more reminiscent of a The BV’s style laconic beauty.
The Beach Fossils have always invited you bask lazily in their afterglow…they just glow more these days.
janglepophub.home.blog 