Album Review: Tunnel Vision

The album cover for Beach Bunny's "Tunnel Vision"

If you’ll believe it, Beach Bunny was originally not even a band. In its earliest version. It was

originally just lead singer Lili Trifilio. In 2017, Beach Bunny became a full band and continued to make music which would lead into their 2018 song(and EP of the same name) “Prom Queen” helping boost their popularity. 2 albums, another EP, and the departure of a guitarist brings us all the way to the summer of 2024, in which they would release their first single from their

forthcoming album, the single being titled “Vertigo”.

A second single titled “Clueless” would be released in September of the same year. In mid-December, the band would reveal the album’s name, titled “Tunnel Vision”. The video in which they would reveal that information would also tease the 3rd single from the album and share the album’s title. February 7th would be when the title track would be released alongside the album’s official release date of April 25th.

Lili, the lead singer, describes this album as a “back to basics” album. Their previous records

had to do with love and heartbreak. Instead, the album focuses on themes of mental health,

anxiety regarding getting older and social issues. Lili said the following in an interview with the

Rolling Stone: “I was just experiencing life, and so many of those feelings is what made it into

the record: self-doubt, uncertainty, dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic and the world. I

think all those feelings really shined on this record.

After many listens of the album, it’s safe to say that I completely agree.

This album does sound different from the previous record, Emotional Creature. In some forms,

it keeps some of the old feel in songs like “Big Pink Bubble”.

But it is a distinct shift from the 2022 album. The album has a more personal feel than their previous releases. You have songs like Chasm and Clueless that discuss aging and how scary that can be with lyrics such as “The past is a promise to make me tough, Future is a chasm that I'll crawl out from”(Chasm) and “Was it better? I was younger. Different problems, different names. Was it perfect? Was it simple? Was it more or less the same?”(Clueless). Even Big Pink Bubble is a song about being intentionally avoidant and protecting oneself.

A surprising song was track 8, titled “Violence”, which serves as a commentary on a wide range

of sociopolitical issues, something they hadn’t really discussed much of before in previous

works. With lyrics in the chorus such as “Hard to be human, your home is a landfill, You fight

over paper, pay taxes to kill, and you're supposed to find a meaning, don't get eaten by the

dark, And you're supposed to find a meaning, Don't get eaten by the dark, The art of living

paints shadows in my heart.

”An interesting change in subject matter, still sounding great in quality, but giving the listener some more topics to think about. The closing track “Cycles” is a repurposed and remastered version of Lili's debut solo single of the same name. A nice touch to close out the album. Some of the best lyrics in the album are in this song. I personally love and heavily relate to the bridge of the song, “Tired of the same routine, What's the point in being free? If I only wanna live to please. Do I ever really live for me? Do I even know myself at all? If nothing's under my control, maybe it's a mortal toll. We'd do anything just to feel whole, and I'm tired of it.”

I thoroughly enjoyed this album as a fan of their previous work. Although it may not have the same sound, I think the change in subject matter & sound leads to an overall very unique project that makes you wanna listen to it over and over again.