Beach Bunny - "Oxygen" track review
Chicago, IL’s Beach Bunny have kicked off a starry new era with their new track “Oxygen” produced by Sean O’Keefe. This is the follow-up to the Blame Game EP, which dropped in the first stretch of this year and has already seen live plays with their current string of shows. The band have stayed busy even in the quarantine era with that EP, an updated version of “Cloud 9,” a track that went gold after seeing Tik Tok success and even collaborating with MARINA in the past couple of weeks. Songwriter and front woman Lili Trifilio commented on the track by saying;
“”Oxygen” is a song about the perils of navigating romantic feelings, the joy that comes with allowing love to happen, and the act of letting go of the anxiety and our inner voices that make us feel undeserving of love. I Wanted it to have a playful vibe with anthemic choruses and a big, blissed out ending.”
A single guitar chord fades into an instrumental that sounds like it would have been at home on one of the band’s earlier EPs, see Crybaby, see Prom Queen. Trifilio even channels the vocal inflection she used on those works a bit here. Unlike those past releases though, there is a much happier mood with the themes back then generally being of depression, failed relationships and so on. On this track however she is singing of being in love.
“They don’t wanna see you the way I do, but life looks better through my rearview.”
Is the line that’s the first real representation of this joy and the instrumental behind it even upticks with a pick up in percussion.
The chorus section is Beach Bunny’s usually blend of something between pop punk and indie rock but with a chord progression that goes bigger and bigger throughout. The lines sung here being;
“Cause with you I breathe again, baby you’re my oxygen.”
Followed by a woah-oh passage. Again this is a much more positive emotion than what was on Blame Game back and as a fan it’s a beautiful thing to see.
All of that pain isn’t forgotten though. While the second verse stays sonically the same, here Trifilio sings having a bad day, locking herself in her room but asking for help in the midst of it. Which, I would just let sink into the positive storytelling but in this particular delivery her voice cracks just a bit and it makes for a more dynamic presentation.
Speaking of vocal performance in chorus two, while again mostly the same, there is a longer woah-oh passage that’s backed by some harmonies and shows Trifilio’s vocal growth in a way earlier parts of the track did not give. In her harmonies especially I’m getting a lot of Jasmine Rodgers of Boa vibes. From here the track breaks down to a back and forth that’s just guitar and vocals to huge full band delivery on each line of the chorus. The last roughly half a minute of the track is almost moshable and shows a bit different variant on the riff as well as having some really impressive percussion work.
Overall I think this track is a great first chapter in what seems to be the cycle of the band’s sophomore record. I’m loving the positive uptick and can’t wait to see what is next in store in the coming year. Below you can check out the track for yourself and keep up with everything that is happening now and to come.
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