Bnny
One Million Love Songs (Fire Talk Records)
Contact Jacob Daneman, Jaycee Rockhold about Bnny
Today, Bnny — the Chicago-based project of Jessica Viscius — announces her new album, One Million Love Songs, out April 5th via Fire Talk Records, and shares its lead single & video, “Good Stuff.” The follow-up to Bnny’s “spare and grieving” (New York Times) 2021 debut album Everything, One Million Love Songs sees Viscius take a brighter turn, showing her immense growth as an arranger and artist. Produced by Viscius and recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville with Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza), One Million Love Songs is a non-linear sketch of a relationship’s genesis to its dizzying end, as catchy as it is hopeful. Viscius sounds more assured than ever — committed to herself, her mistakes, & her big love.
“Good Stuff” is both a memory of heartbreak and a mantra for that still to come. Beginning with siren-like synths and Jess Viscius’ distinct vocals, “Good Stuff” quickly shapeshifts into one of the most upbeat songs in Bnny’s discography. “I’m hanging on to the good stuff,” she sings atop bright guitars and propulsive percussion. “I’m hanging on to my big love.” It’s a beautiful, uplifting continuation of Bnny’s romantic sound. Viscius wrote “Good Stuff” on a Casio keyboard, and was her first song written on a keyboard, giving it a different sound and texture compared to other Bnny songs. “It’s a breakup song,” says Viscius, “but it’s hopeful, optimistic even. Or perhaps it’s just the denial, hoping things will be different next time, hoping that love can save you.”
Bnny’s debut, Everything, was written in the face of tragedy, following the death of Viscius’ partner, fellow Chicago musician Trey Gruber. It was a raw, honest album whose songs seemed to emanate from Viscius like a personal climate. And while those songs have not lost an ounce of their power, performing them every night live across the US and Europe made for a new and different kind of exhaustion. It’s hard to access your grief all the time; it’s even harder to share it. “I wanted to make songs that are exciting to play—songs that make me feel happy,” Viscius says. “This album is about love after loss, getting older, and just trying to have fun with a broken heart.”
One Million Love Songs was written in the wake of a breakup that prompted a period of deep introspection and a grappling with her own self-destructive tendencies. Many of the songs here take it as a given that love will end. There are one million ways to approach love, one million ways to experience love, one million ways in which love shapes both the course of our lives and how we choose to navigate that course. On her second album, Bnny’s Jessica Viscius looks love square in its many eyes and describes, with self-awareness and humor, not only what she sees, but what it makes her feel. Deep romantic love, breathy lust, generous self-love—and their opposites, self-loathing, resentment, disappointment—all make appearances on One Million Love Songs.
As with Everything, Bnny is primarily Viscius’ solo project, with assistance from her twin sister Alexa Viscius and a rotating cast of friends. The cover is a photo Alexa took of Jess while they were backpacking in Alaska. It’s an image that exists out of time, like the love song itself—songs that will always be relevant because people will always find themselves drawn to and apart from one another, with the millions and millions of complications those movements bring. The idea is to embrace all of it while remembering that everything passes. It seems instructive that the last thing Viscius sings on this album is “No one loves me anymore.” It seems equally instructive that she sounds completely free.
