Bunny Gets Paid (2015 Reissue)

Description

From Jealous Butcher:

Chicago rock ensemble Red Red Meat hit hard with 1995s Bunny Gets Paid. Arguably the bands most complete album, the record pairs Stones-indebted blues-rock roots with beautiful songs, sounding miles removed from the eras grunge and radio-friendly alternative rock tropes.

Recorded at Idful Studios in Chicagos Wicker Park by producer Brad Wood (Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Tortoise), Bunny Gets Paid finds Red Red Meats core members, Tim Rutilli, Brian Deck, Ben Massarella, and Tim Hurley, straddling the line between their most accessible set of songs and a desire to explore a kind of alternate fidelity, employing layers of distortion, natural reverb, and room ambience.

At the time, I felt like wed made a classic rock record, Rutilli says. I was like, This is our Astral Weeks. But listening back 20 years later, Rutilli recognizes the bands ambition, a desire to break songs down to their barest, most primitive elements to see what survives.

I think it was about testing the melody, how strong a melody was, Rutilli says. It was loving pop music and classic rock songs, but also loving noisethe slow burn of actual sound.

Drummer Brian Deck, whod go on to work on records by Modest Mouse, The Fruit Bats, Iron and Wine, and others, recalls the bands 1995 Sub Pop debut, Jimmywine Majestic, making this promise of a rock revivalist band. With Bunny Gets Paid, the band went in a different direction from that.

To a certain extent we were just punk asses, Deck says. We wanted to do what wasnt expected of us. We wanted to do something new.

The record features some of Red Red Meats best-loved songs. Opener Carpet of Horses pulses with restrained energy under a pastoral shuffle, while Chain Chain Chain imagines RRM as a pop act, with crashing drum fills and a surging chorus. Gauze sits in the middle of the record, a gorgeous droning ballad with languid guitars that give way to the bands most anthemic chorus. The record closes with a reading of Theres Always Tomorrow, as featured in the Rankin/Bass Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and the song fits magically and without irony, a downcast but hopeful sentiment.

They were ahead of the time, producer Brad Wood says. People say that about bands all the time, but it certainly felt that way to me with this particular band.

As Red Red Meat progressed you see them abandoning traditional song forms, experimenting with the sounds of things — basing songs on sounds and grooves, Wood says. More than just about any band I ever worked with, Red Red Meat digested their influences. On Bunny Gets Paid, blues and classic rock and roll sounds are transmuted; the record is the sound Red Red Meat finding unique creative footing.