Bnny — the Chicago band fronted by Jessica Viscius — is an “indie scene staple” (The FADER). Today, the quintet presents ‘Crazy, Baby‘, the new single from their forthcoming album, One Million Love Songs, out April 5th via Fire Talk Records alongside announcing a run of UK/EU tour dates for May including a stop off at The Great Escape and a London headline show at Paper Dress Vintage on May 14th.
Following lead single, ‘Good Stuff‘ — a “hopeful heartbreaker” (Gorilla vs. Bear) wrapped in “a fleecy blend of synth and guitar” (Paste) — ‘Crazy, Baby” is an ode to fated relations that you know won’t last but can’t help pursuing anyway. Through walls of distorted lap-steel guitar and incisive songwriting, ‘Crazy, Baby’ would be devastating if it weren’t so catchy. “I’m crazy, baby,” Viscius admits, “I thought you knew [..] I’m just born blue.”
Of ‘Crazy, Baby’, Viscius adds: “‘Crazy, Baby’ is about recognising patterns in your romantic history and yourself.”
There are one million ways to approach love, one million ways to experience love, one million ways in which love shapes both the course of our lives and how we choose to navigate that course. Many of the tracks across One Million Love Songs take it as a given that love will end. In ‘Crazy, Baby’, Viscius lays out her approach to love songs: “write one quick ’cause nothing lasts,” she sings, suggesting that any attempt to capture the green shoots of love’s first moments also carries within it the dying and decaying of the tree. Viscius is looking love square in its many eyes and describing, with self-awareness and humor, not only what she sees, but what it makes her feel.
Produced by Viscius and recorded at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios with Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo de Souza), One Million Love Songs is a brighter, fuller record that shows Viscius’ immense growth as an arranger and artist. It follows Bnny’s “spare and grieving” (New York Times) debut album, Everything, a raw and honest document whose songs seemed to emanate from Viscius like a personal climate. And while those songs have not lost an ounce of their power, performing them every night live across the US and Europe made for a new and different kind of exhaustion. It’s hard to access your grief all the time; it’s even harder to share it. “I wanted to make songs that are exciting to play—songs that make me feel happy,” Viscius says. “This album is about love after loss, getting older, and just trying to have fun with a broken heart.”
Deep romantic love, breathy lust, generous self-love—and their opposites, self-loathing, resentment, disappointment—all make appearances on One Million Love Songs.
1. Missing
2. Good Stuff
3. Crazy, Baby
4. Something Blue
5. Screaming, Dreaming
6. Sweet
7. Nothing Lasts
8. Rainbow
9. Changes
10. Get It Right
11. No One
Tour dates:
Apr 19th | Chicago, IL – The Empty Bottle
May 9th | Rotterdam, NL – Rotown
May 14th | London, UK – Paper Dress Vintage
May 15th | Southampton, UK – Heartbreakers
May 17th | Brighton, UK – The Great Escape
May 18th | Manchester, UK – Yes (Moodswings)
May 20th | Paris, FR – Supersonic
Jun 13th | Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right
Photo credit – Alexa Viscius