Pepper Rabbit goes good with Carnival Food

Music Artist Review

By Ben­nett Briles

I thought it would be decent of me to review an artist whom I have never con­sciously lis­tened to before. So I found Pep­per Rab­bit, a band that describes their music as “a loose brand of psy­che­delic pop music.” I am not sure what “psy­che­delic” means to you, but I am pretty sure a lot of artists might use this term to give them­selves an excuse to use an abun­dance of ran­dom instru­ments and pro­duce a bar­rage of ridicu­lous sound­ing songs or “experiments.”

Does Pep­per Rab­bit do this? Yes and no.

They have used at least eleven dif­fer­ent instru­ments in their songs, so one of their albums might con­tain as many dif­fer­ent sounds as Her­bie Hancock’s key­tar. How­ever, the songs they have pro­duced are mostly dis­ci­plined, yet unique and free enough to keep us interested.

The first twenty sec­onds or so of each song is what has made me want to keep lis­ten­ing to Pep­per Rab­bit. These intros are phe­nom­e­nal, giv­ing me the feel­ing that some­thing inde­scrib­ably excit­ing and good is about to hap­pen. This is espe­cially the case in their most recent album Red Vel­vet Ball. For exam­ple, the intro to the song “Lake House” made me feel like I was a child again at a base­ball game, supremely con­tent with the pos­si­bil­ity of nab­bing a foul ball. The intro to “Alli­son” is also warm-fuzzy induc­ing, plac­ing me at a county fair while snack­ing on cot­ton candy the size of my head. In fact, it seems that the car­ni­val theme may have been an inten­tion of Pep­per Rab­bit judg­ing by the clowns on the album art. The songs “Mur­der Room,” “Dance Card,” and “Tiny Fin­gers” also have this feel—so much so that by the end of Red Vel­vet Ball I was more than ready to step off the merry-go-round and lis­ten to some­body else. Do not get me wrong, I appre­ci­ated the tooty and whistly sounds for a bit, but together with the mod­er­ate nois­i­ness and messi­ness of the album, it may have been a higher dose of “psy­che­delic” than I can han­dle in one day.

Still, with Pep­per Rab­bit, the tal­ent is evi­dent. The lyrics, for one, are­unique and pas­sion­ate enough while not being overly dra­matic. The melodies fol­low suite. One song that is par­tic­u­larly pleas­ing is “The Annex­a­tion of Puerto Rico,” which has hints of MGMT’s “Time to Pre­tend” and the sound of a choir rem­i­nis­cent of Suf­jan Stevens’ Come on Feel the Illi­noise. Com­bine those two hints with Pep­per Rabbit’s unique vocal style and the results are impressive.

While at the moment Pep­per Rab­bit does not have any songs that would be con­sid­ered clas­sics, they are get­ting closer. As they con­tinue to refine their sound, I would not be sur­prised if the next chunk of music they release has a hit that puts them on the map.

Where to lis­ten: Red Vel­vet Ball was released late 2011 and can be sam­pled at grooveshark.com. Pep­per Rabbit’s 2010 LP, Beau­re­gard, can be legally down­loaded for free at noisetrade.com.

If you can only lis­ten to one song: “Lake House” from Red Vel­vet Ball or “Older Brother” from Beauregard

Bennett’s Rat­ing for Red Vel­vet Ball : 3 stars out of 5

Ben­nett Briles is a con­trib­u­tor from Mount Ver­non, OH. He blogs about all things beau­ti­ful, bizarre, and brown at 2brownshoes.wordpress.com.

Posted by Guest 2 Columnist on Apr 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.