Thursday, April 9, 2020

Album Review: Beach Bunny - Honeymoon

Beach Bunny
Honeymoon
**and1/2 out of *****

After releasing a few EP's the Chicago based indie pop band Beach Bunny delivers their first full length effort titled Honeymoon. It is a mix of shout out teen angst and ringing riffs in classic pop/indie/emo rock style. 

The four piece (Lili Trifilio, Matt Henkels, Jon Alvarado, Anthony Vaccaro) deliver tightly wound tunes around front woman Trifilio's upfront singing and confessional lyrics. The music is all designed to support Trifilio whose words/presentation could be presented in direct acoustic fashion, but also border and cross-over the line to cliche and trite teen diary entries. 

The best of the bunch, like "Cuffing Season", turn the idea of upbeat cheery guitars around with singing about paranoia, fear and loneliness effectively. When the band goes full on pop/dance rock on "Colorblind" they seem to have found their sweet spot. Most of Honeymoon however flirts with eye rolls as tunes like "April" make the basic dull lyrics unavoidable or "Ms. California" which (as always) looks west for the answers as problems arise, admittedly around some bumping drum work. 

Trifilio takes center singer/songwriter stage on the electro-keyboard waltzing of "Racetrack" and for the first half of "Rearview" which leads to a successfully crushing finale. The band seems most comfortable with the hard pop rock of "Dream Boy" and opener "Promises" which mixes in shaking tambourines and 'ooo's and aaah's'. 

Beach Bunny straddles a few indie rock sub-genres but yearns to go full on pop, becoming the soundtrack to coming of age comedies, and first crush kisses. Honeymoon is a professional first effort for a band who are coming of age themselves.    
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