Tunabunny - Genius Fatigue

I was introduced to the wonderful world of Tunabunny via last year's superb split-single with Brightons' Shrag. Shrag have now gone their separate ways and I'm hoping the same won't happen to Tunabunny. They've been going a while now and released many a record, but for me this is the first flourishes of a brand new band-crush. I think you're going to love them too.

Tunabunny are from Athens, Georgia but that's not really important. The band's made up of Brigette Herron, Mary Jane Hassell, Scott Creney and Jesse Stinnard. The band's biography on the HHBTM website says: "This is a story about a cat, a mouse, his uncle and six whiskers. Tunabunny is one-part vegetable chemistry, one-part Crambo". Thankfully, decoding that isn't really important either. The important thing about Tunabunny is the fact they play some of the most genuinely exciting, cool and noisy indie-pop/post-punk music you could hope to hear. Tunabunny don't need genre labels.

Genius Fatigue is the bands third full-length release and already it's got me cursing the fact their previous two have somehow passed me by. The album packs a whole heap of energy, melody and enthusiasm into its 36-minute duration and feels like you could be listening to one of those thrillingly immediate Peel Session recordings. 'Duchess for Nothing' kicks things off in fine style with some fuzz-laden power chords coupled to some great lyrics: "She ain't no parody of a woman/ She's a screaming queen? Now you know why/ they don't call me the duchess for nothing". A few seconds into the album and you know you've found a pretty special band.

The whole album's brilliant, so these aren't exactly 'highlights' as such, just tracks I'm enjoying right now. 'Airplanes in Echelon' has a tense yet hazy shoegaze (more genre labels!) feel to it while 'You Do What You Want' is all Sonic Youth discordance and whispered vocals. The spiky 'Pachyderm, Fallen' combines Huggy Bear vibes with an indie-pop stomp, while personal highlight 'Wrong Kind of Attention' features some rather fine Slanted & Enchanted-era Pavement guitar work. Parts of the album sound a little like The Breeders.

Comparisons are ultimately futile however. This is Tunabunny and you'll love them for who they are!