One Hopping Bunny By Al Mousseau, July 2004   Being an independent artist is never easy, and never simple. Tracking down singer, musician and songwriter Bunny Brown in her Toronto Annex kitchen, I interrupted some mango manipulations and mewling cat noises to catch up with one of the many artists that populate the neighbourhood.   Brown, an erstwhile half of the pop duo Happy As Hell, has released a CD entitled Tomorrow The World, and recently came off a showcase performance at Toronto’s North By Northeast music festival.   Born in St. Catharines, Brown moved around southern Ontario for a while, playing music in the Niagara region and elsewhere before finally settling down in Toronto. Though Brown and her then-musical partner Michael D’Amico have mothballed Happy As Hell, they are still active collaborators. Tomorrow The World was co-produced by D’Amico.“We’re always helping each other. He co-produced and played all over this record,” observes Brown.   The new album is an eclectic surprise, and will shock any expectations of typical singer-songwriter out of listeners just two tracks in.   Channelling Radiohead and Bjork as readily as Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell, Brown’s disc features a potpourri of contemporary electronics and atmospheric sounds over a core of solid guitar-based songwriting.      The disc paces itself very well, evoking sounds as disparate as U2’s jangling guitars and air-like vocoder-vocals with ease. “It’s all part of what excites me in music. I’ve never been one to want to limit music to one strict formula, so I think my goal with this record was to try and entertain as many ideas as possible and see if we could realize them. I like all kinds of music,” say Brown. “The inspiration comes from a lot of different places. It was important for me to give it as much breadth as possible.”   Brown’s lyrical content is immediate and gripping, even as it explores more whimsical images, as in the song “Under Spells,” best described as an unnerving mechanical lullaby about robots. There are also more overtly political statements on the disc, as well as paeans to individual integrity that excoriate docility and conformity.   “I was really inspired by the whole punk thing that happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that’s what got the ball rolling for me to play music. I really like things that don’t feel that they’re limited in their form. You can use them as a vehicle to whatever expression that you want to pursue. Production-wise, I don’t like the idea of limiting it. At the base, there’s a certain kind of personal honesty that I want to infuse the songs with. That’s the punk element, a personal and political sensibility that really speaks to the individual,” says Brown. Touchstones of 20th century and early 21st century popular music are referred to throughout Tomorrow The World, but Brown digs around for some more obscure influences.    “I also listen to a lot of 1930s and 1940s era music. I really love the sort of realism, optimism, and sweetness that’s involved in those old treatments. You can hear the despair in those songs, but there’s also a sense of trying to beautify that despair and make an optimistic and hopeful experience out of that. You can get compilation discs of these things. Sometimes you stumble on them at places like Honest Ed’s - strange sources you normally wouldn’t go to buy records. They’re very personal. I find that today, you have a lot of music that sounds like production exercises, but not a lot that’s personal.”          Brown has been making music in the Annex for seven years. “The thing I like about the Annex is that there’s a real cross-section of people here. It’s populated by all stripes of life. You’ve got artists living next to corporate executives, and there’s a sense of colourful nature to the area that I like. It feels good,” says Brown.    As the conversation winds down, Brown returns to her world, musing on music, mangoes, meager income, and meowing felines.

 

Hare Raising By Susan G. Cole, Now, June 2000   Introspective tunesmith Bunny Brown exemplifies the virtues of a free-for-all like North By Northeast. Intensely independent, originally small-town based - and not exactly a household name - Brown’s one of those talents who probably wouldn’t get to shine without the NXNE spotlight.   She’s an artist who likes to be left alone. You can tell by her disarmingly honest reflections, which are carried by crafty melodies and vocals that manage to convey both folksy charm and edgy attitude. This stuff sneaks right up on you.   “I’m fascinated by the psychological approach,” says Brown, formerly of the St. Catharines-based duo Happy As Hell. “It’s the model we use to solve our systems and examine ourselves. I found a used psychology text and was amazed that it contained homilies of the future. In the 30s they used to say, ‘Let a smile be your umbrella.’ But psychology gives us the kind of homilies we might see on packages of tea 30 years from now.”   Spoken like someone who is curious about ideas. Listen to her talk - or check out song titles like Black Hole Theory and Diseases Of Imagination  (from the EP Meet Bunny Brown) - and you get the sense that she spends a lot of her time contemplating ways to make sense of the world. In music, Brown has found what she’s looking for.   “I always sang. When I was six I’d go out and swing on the swings for hours and just sing. It wasn’t even anything I thought anybody did professionally. Then I started getting interested in pop songs. Then I liked Elvis Costello or anyone who was an independent thinker, who’s passionate.”   Brown says her musical obsessions center less around performance and more on making her records her way, without the constraints of a controlling label or producer. Does that make her nervous about Saturday’s NXNE appearance?   “Life itself makes me nervous,” she admits. “But I do like performing. It’s everything attached to it - the energy output that goes into organizing a gig, the money outlay, or worrying about whether anybody’s going to show up - that gets to me.   “But I always think positively about playing live. It’s a way to connect with people.”