Give Beach Fossils credit, despite longtime comparisons to Wild Nothing, DIIV, and Real Estate, Dustin Payseur has always done a better job navigating the restraints of his sound. Beach Fossil’s debut is bright and lo-fi jangle rock, Clash the Truth brings a slightly harder and wispy, post-punk edge, and the underrated Somersault glistens in the sheen of a would-be major label debut. Each album is distinctly Beach Fossils though, the guitars and reverb-soaked vocals are determined to reap the nostalgia of both fleeting, youthful summers, and the band’s own back catalog.
Bunny comes six years after Somersault, a gap that saw the band celebrating the anniversary of their debut through live performances with label mate Wild Nothing as well as the release of an album of piano renditions of the group’s past work. The pandemic could partly be blamed for the long wait time, but regardless Bunny still holds a lot of expectations, and when the band’s last album landed on the jazz charts, it’s hard not to wonder how the band will reposition themselves.
As an album, the obvious similarities fall on Somersault, an album that was about as bright and buoyant as dream pop can be. The album opener “Sleeping On My Own” has one of the biggest choruses the band has ever put to tape, but the melancholy drips in throughout, revealing the loneliness at the end of a relationship. That’s the format of most of these tracks, catchy melodies and crips production covering up a more personal turn from Payseur’s lyrics, still wistful but often much more dejected. This method works great for most of the album. The songs themselves are lean and memorable, never darting too far out of singular thematic sound and always just hinting at a more complex and mature subject matter.
The content of those songs is where Bunny waivers though. Vulnerability is not a weakness, especially for a group that could be accused of keeping their audience at arms-length, but Beach Fossils’ have lost the thread slightly, with more specificity comes more examination. Most of Payseur’s lyrics serve their purpose, they recall universal dissatisfaction or the foggy aura of memories and reconsideration. More important though is how he sings those lyrics, in a calm and haunting, overdubbed disengagement that makes them work.
On “Run to the Moon” and “Dare Me” in particular though, the exact particulars of the youthful escapades detract from the overall sentiment, and Payseur’s earnestness doesn’t elicit the sense that he has more to say and is simply choosing not to. Regardless, Bunny deserves credit, like each Beach Fossils album, for challenging an aspect of Payseur’s process, even if it was less effective this time around.
