Unbunny is primarily the work of singer and songwriter Jarid del Deo. In his 12-year career under the Unbunny name, he found time to release five pop albums, as he hopped all over the United States, moving from Washington state to Illinois to New Hampshire and back again. Now he's once again based out of Seattle and has recently released Sensory Underload, a compilation of previously unreleased material, reaching back to 1996.
Though he wrote all the songs on Sensory Underload himself, del Deo didn't work entirely alone. Several friends played, sang or helped record many of its 17 tracks (clocking in at a total of 37 minutes, each song is fairly brief), and you can even spy a mention of fellow Seattle resident and Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla in the album's liner notes.
Short songs can be a blessing or a curse, and in this instance, they're both. The upside is that a listen to Sensory Underload will quickly expose you to many of del Deo's personalities: there's the introspective folk musician ("The Path"), the grave humorist ("We're All Going to Die"), the lover of rock guitars ("Water and the Spanish Tongue") and the fan of Superchunk ("Mandi"). But short songs also mean there's not adequate time to spend with the best moments on Sensory Underload. The untitled 7th track, for example, features only an acoustic guitar and del Deo's earnest voice as he sings through what sounds like the fuzz of a tape recorder, "I really want to talk to you / But I get a little tongue-tied / Everybody gets tongue-tied sometimes / But I think you double-knotted me this time." It's a sentiment so sweet that those 58 seconds just don't seem like enough. Then again, it's better that del Deo leave the listener wanting more on Sensory Underload, than not deliver at all.
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