RED RED MEAT - Bunny Gets Paid (Deluxe Edition)

When this album first came out in 1995, Red Red Meat were already one of my favourite bands. Bunny Gets Paid solidified their status in my mind as an uncomfortably beautiful spectacle--a marble-mouthed street preacher drunk on Appalachian moonshine, tripping over tambourines and maracas only to land in sticky dollops of molasses blues. They didn't play music so much as let it fall out of their pockets like loose change, and 15 years later, RRM songwriter Tim Rutili has made several albums by leading his second band Califone down a similar, if more folk-influenced, path. Bunny Gets Paid, though, is where his perverse and gorgeous journey first began in earnest. While the bonus material on this deluxe edition is slim, it expands beautifully on the album's mission statement, even when via a grizzled cover of Low's first single "Words". But the star, as it should be, is the record itself--as wounded, cautious, and haunted as ever.