Electric Bunnies - Fantastic Metal Eye 7"

Who knows if the three songs that Miami’s Electric Bunnies submitted to Columbus Discount are months old toss-offs or signifiers of where the trio are headed, either way it’s puzzling, as the low-key Fantastic Metal Eye 7” keeps the ball rolling for one of the underground’s most puzzling little bands that could. They rarely tour, so I’ve yet to recognize faces, only rudimentary, almost precious animations of, you guessed it, bunnies, and on this slab, cutesy androids. The title track here is vocoded monotony/propaganda about imagined “sweet robots” or “loose robots", though they relapse into momentary Trans Am love, the throb underneath grows and grows with each measure, then at the last minute a release is found and the Oneida-esque build bursts the transistors wide open and wires start flailing about. I’d like to think the Bunnies never even heard of TA and instead worshipped the gutting electronics of Tim Taylor.

Fantastic Metal Eye is off-putting fer sure and compiling a singles comp. of everything we’ve heard thus far would be disorienting (a comp. of ten different bands?), at any turn you’re not sure where they stand. “Bubble Bath” in particular should be, so far, the band’s calling card, as it rides a one-legged psych groove that drills down like a teen-aged Wooden Shjips spiralin’ minimal disco-funk, wrapped precociously in two sheets of haze and feedback squealing. The distance between this and the hummable confections of “Chewing Gum” and “Eskimo” throws me way off course. Maybe they’re the crunk TV Ghost. Only time will tell.

That leaves me with “Beautiful Pants,” the last thing we’re given till a full-length (supposedly), and what we’re left with is an angry atonal outburst that owes a fuckton to Wire. Quick and to the pointless, still rooted in their own putrid innocence, and by god I’d much rather have a band owe the fuckton to Wire than most other bands in the post-punk cannon.