A million love songs

There is a particular pain that occurs after every big ending. It doesn't have to be a breakup. it could be death, moving out of an apartment, or settling down for bed at the end of a particularly perfect day. Throughout their seven-year career, Chicago soft rockers Bnny have sat in that wounded sadness like a frog in a pond. Their second album, A million love songsshe finds strength in it, using gritty layers of guitar to shatter the teary-eyed world of singer-songwriter Jessica Viscius.

Viscius' 2021 grief-stricken debut, Everythingexcavated some of her pain following the death of her musician partner in 2017 Trey Gruber. (Viscius is also a former graphic designer for Pitchfork.) It was slow and frozen, Viscius's voice breaking through the cold silences like dust, but A million love songs furnishes the abandoned house with a more delusional form of acceptance. Constant disappointment is okay, or at least tolerable, because it proves you're alive. “I was just born blue,” sings Vicious on the anthemic “Crazy, Baby,” dripping with melted Angel Olsen ice cream.

Bnny's grief stems from a breakup, this time. Wednesday producer Alex Farrar helps brighten it up with little rhinestone details, like the heartbeat of the drums on “Get It Right” that drives Viscius' promise of “trying, trying, trying.” “Good Stuff” sparkles like a ruby ​​slipper, turning to a Sheryl Crow chorus: “I'm hanging on/To the sunshine,” Viscius sings with abandon, as if turning on the car radio, “I'm hanging on / To my great love.”

But unlike comparable breakup music—burn it and put it in a lipstick tube albums like Jagged little pill or more recently, Get angry—A million love songs he never resents it. He can't imagine closing anyone's truck. Bnny's music seems more like surrendering to the “millions” of the disappointing effects of love, the introspective contrast to Magnetic Fields.” 69 love songs: the urgency to recognize that you could end up alone. The firefly flicker of the closing acoustic track, “No One,” makes that abundantly clear. “Burn some bridges/And burn some doors/Now nobody loves me anymore,” Vicious sings, resigned. So what should you do—break out? No, you enjoy the mystery.

Sometimes, the lyrics A million love songs to pull you unaided from your seat at the moment when it is just beginning to get well. Lines like “trying to walk straight/But I'm tripping/Trying to forget you/But I'm struggling” feels more like getting lost in the RhymeZone than Viscius's otherwise lovely garden. Yet the album reigns in melancholy, using careful guitar and vocal flourishes to make the music's embryonic self-awareness feel urgent, like it's your own. There is power in reclaiming unhappiness, allowing it to become a piece of your heart instead of a weight on your back.