First Blood by Nobunny
LABEL: Goner Records

In standing in a crowd of a Nobunny show you are bearing witness to two things, one certainly, the other possibly. For certain is that Nobunny is in costume: his trademark mask accompanied by a ball gag or perhaps women’s underwear. Possible is Nobunny undressing, perhaps partially, more likely completely. This is what you sign up for when you go to a Nobunny show. This is what you like about him.

“Nobunny is what what happens when you give Joey Ramone a pack of bubble yum and tell him to chew.”

But it’s more likely that you like Nobunny’s music. Whereas Nobunny’s stage act could, in theory, be called a gimmicky and glorified musical striptease, Nobunny’s music works because it takes everything you likely love about The Ramones and Oblivians and makes it sweet. As strange as it is to say it, Nobunny is what what happens when you give Joey Ramone a pack of bubble yum and tell him to chew.

Similar to Nobunny’s debut LP, 2008’s Love Visions, First Blood is split between the veritably pop and the authentically punk. “Ain’t It a Shame” the album’s buoyant and suitable opener is an example of the former, more calculated and produced than essentially anything else Nobunny has created. (That’s significant, by the way.) “Blow Dumb,” which is about drugs or sex or perhaps both, could have been made by the Velvet Underground. It’s that punk. And beautiful.

Indeed, Nobunny has taken, on the whole, a step up on the quality-assurance scale and towards a particular sort of produced punk-psych-garage-sex rock. First Blood sounds fresher, more polished, and more dynamic than its predecessor, spanning genres gracefully and with few hiccups. Rockabilly (“Never Been Kissed”) shares company with garage (“Gone For Good”),  and garage is often bedmates with what sounds conspicuously like 60s girl pop (“Aint It A Shame”).

Normally, that sort of genre jumping leads to a awful sort of schizophrenic malaise. But Nobunny makes it work, mostly because First Blood is a twenty-four minute album. That’s a breath-and-a-half as far as records go—short, sweet and over, sadly, before it really begins. That could be bad in most cases, but for Nobunny, who is, after all, a frenetic and oft-horny bunny, a short attention span is perhaps expected. 


REVIEWED BY RICARDO BILTON
RICARDO’S FAVORITE TRACKS: “Aint it A Shame” • “Blow Dumb” • “Gone for Good”