After signing to Fire Talk Records in May, Chicago rock quintet Bnny—featuring bandleader Jess Viscius, her twin sister Alexa Viscius, and their best friends Tim Makowski, Matt Pelkey and Adam Schubert—announced their debut album in June, Everything, coming next Friday, Aug. 20. Now, the band has released “August,” the fourth single from their album following “Time Walk,” “Ambulance” and “Sure.”
Jess Viscius wrote Everything in several years’ worth of sessions while processing the death of her partner—a press release evocatively describes the album as “a field recording taken from the lone country of grief.” On Bnny’s previous singles, namely “Ambulance” and “Time Walk,” the songwriter struggles to leave her painful past behind, singing in the former, “I’ll never forget those flashing lights,” and in the latter, yearning to tell her lost love “all the things I couldn’t.”
On “August,” though, she looks to the future, breathily intoning, “Some people never change / But I’ll change one day,” over soft, undulating electric guitar and shuffling drums. Ambient nature sounds (like the “screaming” bugs on the “summer muggy night” Jess Viscius sings about) border the song, giving it the feel of something naturally occurring, not made—meanwhile, Jess Viscius incants, “I know I know I know I know / I’ll change I’ll change,” like she’s trying to speak a better future into being.
“‘August’ is about fleeting summer nights in the hazy heat of Chicago,” says Jess Viscius in a statement. “It’s about knowing what’s best for you and doing the exact opposite. It’s about the lies we tell ourselves to keep going.”
Listen to “August” below and see the details of Everything further down. You can preorder the record ahead of its Aug. 20 release right here.
Everything Album Art:
Everything Tracklist:
01. Ambulance
02. August
03. Promises
04. Take That Back
05. Time Walk
06. So Wrong
07. Sure
08. Not Even You
09. Blind
10. Dreaming
11. Thaw
12. Little Flower
13. Stardust
14. Voice Memo
