Gram Rabbit

Cultivation

(Stinky)

Record Review by Amber Henson

Gram Rabbit are a little creepy.  Their new album, Cultivation, is their follow-up to their debut, Music to Start a Cult To.  Considering that this group lives out in the Joshua Tree desert of California, and their frontwoman is named Jesika von Rabbit, there really is a hint of that cult feeling.

Cultivation isn’t all that exciting in terms of beats that will stick in your head or lyrics that will make you think (I can’t actually understand the majority of lyrics), but it’s still definitely interesting.  There’s something about Gram Rabbit that reaches a certain group of people, who then go on to wear bunny ears at the band’s live shows.  Many of their songs sound like they’ve been recorded for a video game.  “Paper Hearts” has a sample running through it that sounds exactly like The Legend of Zelda:  A Link to the Past (the Super Nintendo game from back in the day).

Other songs play like background music, never quite demanding your full attention.  Sometimes Gram Rabbit sound like Garbage, if Garbage were stoned; they attribute their inspiration to their native desert, and perhaps that’s what makes the music seem so slow and psychedelic.  It’s probably the kind of stuff you’d hear in your head after you’d been trudging through the desert for too long.  That’s not to say that the album is bad—it’s just a very particular cup of tea:  a 60s feel coupled with the video game vibe mentioned earlier.  If those themes appeal to you, then Cultivation will be an album for you.