Bunnygrunt Volume 4

They started off twee but spent so much time on the road that they learned how to rock. The missing link between Teenage Fanclub and Teenage Wasteland, like a bat out of hell baby, Bunnygrunt was born to run. They’ve been tearing it up for years now—legends of the underground teaching the indie kids how to rock and the rockers how to weep. Fueled by the kindest dog in St. Louis, the immortal Rusty, Bunnygrunt’s spent their lives stuck in the middle of a nowhere that used to be a somewhere (the gateway to the west that’s now seen as a hateway to the rest), and you can hear it in every note of their beer-soaked, hopefully desperate and hopelessly hopeful, music. Vol. 4 is the band’s sixth album, or maybe their fifth. It depends on how you want to count them. But as far as HHBTM’s concerned, it’s the band’s first record—because for somebody out there it might be, and because it might just be their best. Listen to ‘Chunt Bump’ and hear all those years of touring—too many restless nights and too many late-night rest stops—coalesce into a 7-minute epic with the most laid back motorik sound you’ve ever heard. An American Neu, fuelled by guitars and microwave burritos and trash tv, the sight of endless corn and endless cows. If you can’t appreciate a title like album closer ‘Still Chooglin’ (After All These Beers)’, then screw you and screw us too. Just because it’s funny doesn’t mean it’s a joke. Just because you’re laughing doesn’t mean you’re not sad. If they’d ever broken up they’d be legends by now, but who wants to spend the rest of their lives in a museum.