Beach Bunny - Blame Game EP Review

 Beach Bunny, the indie rock quartet from Chicago, IL, has had a pretty boom in the recent year. From their song a title track to their 2019 EP Prom Queen making a fairly viral splash on Tik Tok and even getting to play Jimmy Kimmel just two weeks back. On a personal note the band has made a huge impact on me in the past year, with their 2020 album being my second favorite of the entire year and the lead single from this project on the tail end of the year easily becoming one of my favorite singles and making me highly anticipate this release for 2021. The band promised this EP would be an angrier, edgier side of them as opposed to the sad lamenting found on Honeymoon.

That single, “Good Girls (Don’t Get Used),” opens the EP up with a bass riff and vocal lead from the first second and takes you right into the track. As the song goes on we get a sense it’s what we’d come to expect but does come through with a straight-up pop punk chorus and a bridge that sounds more so 90s pop. None of these are things the band have never done before but we’re only a minute or so in and we’re already seeing improvements to a pretty successful formula. As we reach the songs climax we here the key line in the pre chorus “you’re not a ghost, I’m not afraid of you” backed with no instrumentals for emphasis and leading into the chanting of “you say you won’t but then you do” accompanying what could be described as a big rock ending.

The second single, title track and closer was released on the day of the EP’s release and tackles the issue of men objectifying women and not being held responsible. While this track, sonically, could easily fit into last year’s Honeymoon it is valuable as a song for it’s message and just demonstration of the band’s comfortability in their sound.

The second track, “Love Sick” has more of a chill but also bouncy vibe and sounds like it would be at home on some coffee shop soundtrack. Really impressed with the riffing here. The chorus sounds like something right out of the earlier Beach Bunny EPs like Crybaby just with more of an up to date approach on the technology. Right after each chorus we get an instrumental piece that sounds almost Ska-like in nature and inspiration. Going into the final section of the track we get this huge, sad, almost school dance sounding bridge with massive vocals that take us to the ending bit.

In “Nice Guys” we get the promised anger and edge in full force right away with the opening line being “you’re so pretentious” and backed by lite strumming leading into what I feel I can describe as a punk, almost post-hardcore, maybe even droney leaning instrumental. The chorus gets even edgier and rougher with the main line, “I’m sick of nice guys,” being shouted like it’s at a dingy yet cool rock club in the mid 2000s. Honestly I want to give you some kind of quote here but the entire chorus is just full of rightfully angry lines that I think it’s best just experienced. The end of the song really dives into the post-hardcore sound with the section of gang vocals and banging guitar chords.

I also want to shout out the lyricism in the overall project. What we find here is pretty clever, snarky occasionally straight up pissed off lines just being totally over some ex-partners. Two key lines that impacted me the most here in the funny-angry way are;

“Say you want me, actually you want me, did you want a ribbon? Cause I’m gonna need to hear more than that”

-”Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)”

“You’re not my interest, if your ego had a zip code it would be a whole state wide”

-Nice Guys

There’s also plenty of sad, yet realism calling lines but honestly the best of that is found in the entirety of the title track so just give it a listen.

All in all, while this release does leave me wanting more at just 14 minutes, it shows a lot of genre fluidity with its various inspirations. It doesn’t showcase a lot of sonic progression but shows growth is over all ability in all band members and song writing as a whole. Also the lyrics overall offer something to engross yourself in for dealing with social issues be them social or for toxic masculinity as a whole. Had a positive experience here and was not let down from my anticipation and hopefully looking forward to more from them in the coming year.