The first song on
Tunabunny's fourth album, 2014's
Kingdom Technology, lets the listener know right away that things have changed for the band. The six-minute-long "Airless Spaces" is a hypnotic, repetitive track that unspools very slowly as echoing vocal harmonies flit across the churning noise erratically. It's an interesting way to start a record by a band whose former strength was the fiery intensity with which they attacked their catchy riot pop. The rest of the record is pretty odd, too. It alternates songs built on a high-energy guitar attack with those made up of avant-garde electronic noise, and mixes pulsing dance-punk with super-hooky almost-pop and agit-pop. Almost all of the record has smears of ugly noise creeping around the edges of the mix; some even feature this fuzzy, almost concrete sound as the focal point. Thanks for this approach goes to the weird sound-recording device a friend fished out of a dumpster, and some of it probably can be chalked up to
Tunabunny's need to expand their sound after a long time perfecting what they had been doing. It's an urge that makes sense; no bands want to repeat themselves forever, even if the results are still good. The best parts of the album are when
Tunabunny successfully incorporate new sounds into their previous format, as on the dubby "Chalked Up" or Good God Awful," or when they quit experimenting and drop the instant-classic riot pop song "Coming for You." ~ Tim Sendra