Relying on the classic four-piece set-up, familiar song structures, and simple production, you might think you can come into Gunbunny's debut EP The White City having heard it all before. But it's this same bare simplicity that brings attention to the band's adventurous songwriting: twisting bass lines, smart-alecky rhythms, unhinged vocals, and some wonderfully warped understanding of how to put it all together.
"Never Wrong" has the dangerous strut and taunting lyrical sparseness that makes me wonder as I listen if there's a murder at the end of the song. Low, rattling drums play the tense heartbeat of a runaway. Dizzying guitar and bass lines stalk with mischief like a matador's, or a mobster's. Searching for the end of the melody's restless tension, I realize that I'm the victim in its sights. Just past its halfway point, the song throws away the words and threatens me with the sonic equivalent of a stare eye-to-eye. For a minute and a half, it pushes me against the wall of an aural alley, intensifying and escalating, raising and raising its weapons. Just when the suspense hits a height and I can't see past the knife, the band resets completely. The next track follows as a laid-back, earthy nod to Wilco ("Left Coast"). It's a maniacal and yet seamless switch, and the looseness of "Left Coast" and jaunty sound of the subsequent "Hidden" even accentuate the shadows of the tracks before them.
The White City drives with the rambunctious attitude and twitchy, traveling rhythms you'd expect from, say, Wolf Parade, but colored with its own occasional twang. Every song on this album pulls complicated writing from a stripped sound in a way that's unsettled, unsensible, and yet completely, rightfully convincing. With cases for contradiction that not only boast the rogue young Seattle band's range but prove their confident, artful approach, the short EP is no doubt a promising beginning for a band that's sure to scheme up something more.