It had to happen eventually. Arthur Russell passed away in April of 1992, but through the dedicated sifting and sorting and careful consideration and meticulous preparation of his former partner, Tom Lee, and Audika Records founder and custodian of Russell’s musical estate, Steve Knutson, the man’s reputation has been burnished by a steadily growing posthumous back catalog over nearly 20 years — a span longer, in fact, than Russell’s original period of recording. But the well had to dry up at some point, and with Picture of Bunny Rabbit, Knutson himself says it may be Audika’s last “major” release. It is a beautifully fitting way to wind down the endeavor.
One of the reasons Russell remains such a guiding light for modern pop music is his boundless curiosity for genre; in that sense, he’s as contemporary as anyone working today — whenever today is as you read this. You have the dance-oriented Arthur that attracted acolytes of the “Springfield” DFA remix to stuff on Calling Out of Context as much as it did names like Larry Levan or Nicky Siano the first time around; you have his deep interest in theater and dance manifest themselves in scores like Tower of Meaning that Julius Eastman ended up conducting; you have the heartland singer-songwriting of stuff like Iowa Dream that showcased how plainly good he could be at conventional, Oskaloosa-infused coal town folk songs; you have all of it on what remains his masterpiece, World of Echo (though it’s worth a word here to mention the curious absence of Another Thought from Audika’s catalog).
Weaving in and out of all of these is an Arthur Russell I’d call the nocturnal, an artist interested in texture more than songcraft, moods more than discernible lyrics, often foregrounding long pulls on the cello and lower-register vocals on the mic. A less charitable way of putting it might be that it’s the version of Russell that haunts most, but you could just as easily say it’s the one that most completely taps into his ethereal skill, that otherworld of echo. However you want to look at it, that’s the Arthur Russell you get as the framework for Picture of Bunny Rabbit. There are noisy experiments and electronic wobbles afoot in these productions, but the bones of it are what I’d like to believe are the closest we come to his unconscious.
“Fuzzbuster #10” sets the scene with a gentle, contemplative instrumental of swooping cello and keys, and there are two more “Fuzzbusters” that lend color and scene-setting to this album that are well sequenced. “Not Checking Up” (which first appeared in 2019) makes its first appearance on record. The gorgeous “Telling No One” is virtually impenetrable lyrically in part because of the echo and in part because Russell jumps notes and rushes in closer to the mic, then backs away, emphasizing the dynamics and homespun nature that so many of his songs showcase. The album’s eponymous eight-minute noise experiment is the only clear outlier, but even in context, its continual manipulation of the cello into an increasingly weirder and ultimately almost guitar-shredding raga feels oddly welcome, a jolt of energy to an otherwise quiet, sedately restrained record that ends with another beauty from the archives. You can feel the same synth burblings from “The Boy With a Smile” in the bass if you turn “In the Light of a Miracle” up loud enough, but it’s almost a distraction to the after-hours love song Russell plucks to life. “Dancing in the light, holding in the light, reaching in the light …” he repeats as the song nears its conclusion.
That is how I suspect most fans of Arthur Russell would like to imagine themselves: dancing, holding, reaching in the light of his tremendous gift. Much like his ironically titled “Losing My Taste for the Nightlife” (which is his most touching song, and which I don’t think I’ve ever played before dusk or after dawn), Picture of Bunny Rabbit acts as a missive from beyond the beaming moon, a distant lover’s planet transmitting messages of hope and heart to those back here who need to hear it — for which there will always be a handful. The album may be the last major project Audika puts out, but just think of the people hearing this for the first time who weren’t even alive for Calling Out of Context, never mind World of Echo. There will be new followers forever even when there is no more new music. Arthur Russell passed away in April of 1992; Arthur Russell is eternal. The picture never faded.
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