Bluesbunny has ears for all kinds of music and it especially tickles our big fluffy ears when we hear something a bit different. Now, Fanattica come from Edinburgh and throw some Mediterranean influences into their particular sonic mix in a bid to entice us away from beer (it is not actually possible to entice Bluesbunny away from beer but we appreciate the effort). Armed only with the information from their MySpace page, we painted ourselves a mental picture of Fanattica that included cravats chilled Chardonnay and those bogging French cigarettes that supposedly cultured folks smoke. For those of you unfamiliar with Scottish politics, Edinburgh folks regard all Glaswegians as serial soap dodgers and we regard them as a bunch of self obsessed shandy drinkers.
There are five songs on this download EP so we shall now put on our reviewer's hat. "Anuska" starts off with some gypsy flavoured violin before coming over all Chris Rea like. Fortunately the song redeems itself by the half way mark with some thudding percussion and some suitably theatrical vocals by the chap named John. "Baltic Sea Shanty" sounds like a vaguely camp version of the "Song of the Volga Boatmen". A bit too much baby oil and not enough real sweat. Bluesbunny has always had a difficult relationship with cats. Cats don't like us and we don't like them. Having two cats in a song title like "Black Cat, White Cat" made us a bit nervous but it turned out to be a pleasingly jaunty, accordion driven tune with the big man's vocals saving it from excessive cuteness. The killer track is "Goodnight". This really works well. The passion is there but the whole song seems so much more controlled and serious than the rest of the songs. Even better, it builds and builds and then settles into a solid groove that is 100% white soul. There are times when you wish you could sing and there are times when you hear a song and know that there are people out there who are actually born to sing.
Overall, the music on this EP did seem kind of tame. Having said that, "Goodnight" is a soulful stormer of a song that wholly justifies your hard earned cash. Bluesbunny would also bet his own good money that all of these songs - and especially "Goodnight" - would sound much better on vinyl (or even CD) than on these rather flat sounding mp3s. Might be entertaining to track down a live appearance from them as well…