Picture of Bunny Rabbit

It took a while, but Audika’s Steve Knutson has finally broached what was, perhaps, the most exalted phase of Arthur Russell’s career — the gaseous, elemental cello-and-voice songs of 1986’s World Of Echo. The nine songs on Picture Of Bunny Rabbit were recorded around a similar timeframe, and one of the joys of this album is that it isn’t a second-rate version of World Of Echo, or even that album’s shadow side; it’s full, rich with ideas and possibilities, as though Russell couldn’t stop that hyperactive brain from creating. If you love his voice — a gentle, sometimes threadbare thing, that’s even more charming for its lightness — there are performances here where Russell’s singing is at its most astral; the cello, dispersed into clouds of reverb and echo, soars, grinds, warps, weaves. Each song is an incomplete circle unto itself; that’s its charm, ultimately, not only the pleasures of what we are hearing now, but also the dreamed vision of what this sublime music could yet be.