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Friday, March 29, 2024
The Observer

Rabbit Junk is Priceless

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Susan Zhu | The Observer
Susan Zhu | The Observer
“I’ve lived long enough to be afraid to die.”

No, this nugget of wisdom isn’t from Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Missing Part of the Iceberg” or Pink Floyd’s record “Pretentious Warriors At the Gates of Pitchfork.” This inversion of “YOLO” actually crops up in a fleeting moment of calm on Rabbit Junk’s new EP, “Pop That Pretty Thirty.” However, the line is more than a simple recognition of mortality; frontman JP Anderson follows it up very shortly with, “I yield to the moment like the flesh does the knife.” This pair of statements form a paradox that ultimately sums up “Pop the Pretty Thirty.” Rabbit Junk are here to party as if they’re 18-year-olds at a major music festival, but they’re also dedicated to demonstrate their experience and expertise in their field. Grippingly dense arrangements, relentlessly heavy production and an armada of god-tier hooks make “Pop That Pretty Thirty” one of the most exciting pump-up records released this year.

Forming the core of “Pop That Pretty Thirty” is an amalgam of every musical party ingredient imaginable. Thundering drum machines, chanting female and male vocals, earth-shattering guitars, glitchy breakdowns and massive bass are ever-present. The heavy-metal/electronica fusions that Sleigh Bells and Linkin Park brought to life have essentially been crafted into a single beast here. Excellent production keeps every sound razor-sharp and every crescendo/decrescendo at max impact. In essence, Rabbit Junk has distilled decades of stadium themes and compacted them into a single sleek product.

It’s a shame that many bands with massive sounds that cater to hyped-up, party-like atmospheres suffer lyrically. Rabbit Junk doesn’t have this problem. Their hooks are simple and memorable, but hardly dumbed-down. At the heart of their standout track “IDONTGIVEA****” is a perfectly universal rallying cry reminiscent of the Clash: “I WANT TO GO OUT DANCING THEY WILL NOT LET ME GO!” Then there’s female vocalist Nadia G.’s amazing bridge: “No gods or masters / I’m my own disaster/Neither former nor latter/Just climbing Jacob’s ladder.” Ten out of ten would chant again. And that’s just one song.

Paired with these mega-huge lyrics are mega-huge musical moments. “Crutch” crafts a huge build up that stomps its way alongside “So I will not give a, So I will not give a” chant until it explodes into a hardcore-style scream. The riff that opens “Precipice” is the sort of fret-shredding barrage that makes your Guitar Hero-playing younger brother yell, “Just imagine this on Expert!” And then there’s the Tell ‘Em-style intro to the title track that actually seems to endanger your speakers’ health. In other words, your speakers haven’t lived until they’ve played Rabbit Junk.

At a mere five songs long, “Pop That Pretty Thirty” is the perfect blast of untamed sonic hype for your workout, warm-up or whatever else you can imagine. It’s also a free download off Rabbit Junk’s Bandcamp sight. So what are you waiting for? Go snag this awesome EP and let it remind you just how awesome it is to live.