Furvis
Bunny
Self-ReleasedGrade: B


The songs on Bunny, the new album by Furvis-Michael Cummings (vocals and guitar), Noah Rubin (drums) and Matt Borg (guitar)-are a lot like the kind of music you'd expect to hear in a coffeehouse on a good night. With only seven tunes, none of which are particularly impressive in terms of music, lyrics or overall quality, it seems unlikely that Bunny would blow anyone away.

This shouldn't, however, be taken as an insult against the band, nor Bunny, which is actually quite likable. While the CD is not as refined as it could have been, most of its flaws can be explained away because this is a self-produced album, not a studio release. Although the songs themselves don't really stand out in any way, they at least have pleasant rhythms, and Bunny flows smoothly from track to track.
Often an indie album that is above average in terms of melodies and instrumentals falls flat due to trite, insipid lyrics. It was thus something of a relief to find out that Bunny's songs came complete with lyrics that were, if not imaginative, at least not unoriginal. "PiSatas" is about a "wasted mind in this candy world," and the strangely-titled "Nobody Likes a Vegan" has the equally bizarre lines, "I'm going back to 1980/Like Don Johnson buy a gun and smile/I like to sleep all through this clichd day/And I think I just might."

You may wonder why bringing up the former lead of Miami Vice has any relevance to hating vegans. Quite frankly, I wonder the same thing. However, independent alternative rock is a genre frequently filled with albums prone to slipping into overdramatic ballads about a hurt lover taking out his frustration on the world. Finding a band, then, which makes a valiant stab at being interesting to the listener as well as to the songwriters, can be a little like finding a diamond in the rough, albeit an unpolished diamond.

The lyrics sound about as good as they look. Cummings, who also wrote all of the songs, is a fine vocalist who sounds similar to a thousand other indie rock singers, but out of all the voices one could have, it's a pretty nice one to be stuck with. When he's given full rein on certain tracks, notably the lovely and mellow, "The Last of the Dwarves," he has the ability to take the so-so material he's written for himself and meld it into something higher, until he's singing the sort of song that makes you turn up the radio just a little higher to nod along to the tune.

Oddly enough, every once in a while this clearly talented singer sacrifices skill for drama, and chooses to shriek his way through the louder portions of certain songs. These moments are few and far between-his inexplicable screams-of-the-damned at the end of the otherwise agreeable "Untitled" mark the only moment when it actually becomes a problem for the ears-but it is surprising that he chooses to do it at all, since he's otherwise rather good.

But despite a few flaws here and there, Bunny generally makes for easy listening. It is, however, quite a difficult piece of work to review. Several attempts passed before I started typing, as every time I put it on, it sank so deeply into the background that over time I would begin to forget I was even listening to it. But that's not an insult either. It's just that Furvis appears to have custom-designed their album to be the ideal soundtrack for hanging around inside on a sunny afternoon.