Picture of Bunny Rabbit

Album review

When irrepressible and boundless musician Arthur Russell died in 1992, he left behind a small lifetime's worth of unreleased material. During his short time on Earth, he had some club hits and released a few albums that explored his dancefloor-oriented impulses as well as more experimental modes. Posthumous releases, however, have shed light on the larger scope of Russell's work, with 1994's Another Thought showcasing his sweetly naïve songwriting, 2004's Calling Out of Context collecting tracks that lived between his avant-garde disco production mindset and an uncanny pop sensibility, and releases like 2008's Love Is Overtaking Me and 2019's Iowa Dream exposing country-folk undercurrents. Picture of Bunny Rabbit is another deep dive into Russell's archive of unreleased tapes, focusing on material closest stylistically to his unequaled 1986 endeavor World of Echo. On that album, Russell created an engrossingly beautiful atmosphere using mostly heavily processed cello and softly murmuring vocals, resulting in a meditative but all-consuming sound unlike anything else. Picture of Bunny Rabbit consists of nine tracks cut from a similar cloth, with many of them built from only heavily delayed cello bowings, breathily melodic vocals, and subaquatic burbling sounds filling in as rhythms. Pieces like "Very Reason," "Not Checking Up," and "In the Light of a Miracle" carry the same gentle strangeness of World of Echo, structured like an endless river of sound Russell dips in and out of. There are some new subtleties here that will be unexpected surprises to anyone already enamored with World of Echo, such as the guitar that joins double-tracked cellos on "Fuzzbuster #06" or the unannounced segments of harmonica on "The Boy with a Smile." Though this previously unheard material is in a very similar mode as World of Echo, it benefits from multiple decades of advances in audio technology, with a sound more robust and defined than the thin, somewhat dated production of the 1986 album. So much of Russell's work contained a playful curiosity, but that sweet character never felt so apparent as it did with the delicate intensity of World of Echo. Picture of Bunny Rabbit's continuance of that pure spirit is a gift to anyone with a special place in their heart for Russell, and even more evidence of just how peerless he was an artist.
© Fred Thomas /TiVo