Essential Listening – New Artist Spotlight  – Lonnie Gunn

Brighton-via-New-Jersey artist Lonnie Gunn has announced her debut EP, 2013 horsemeat scandal, out independently August 6th, led by new single “Babytooth”. Co-written with Oscar Lang, the track pushes further into pop-rock than her earlier work, with vocal turns and glitch textures that recall Mitski and Caroline Polachek. Gunn says it’s about becoming so dependent on someone’s approval that you shrink around them, losing your own shape entirely. The title comes from her childhood toy, a stuffed lamb apparently It fits the EP’s wider themes. Written over a year Gunn describes as spent “in constant flux between nostalgia and grief,” the seven tracks include earlier singles like “Good Girls Go to Heaven” and “photocopy” songs she’s called “bubblegum grunge,” pairing melody with distortion. Fiona Apple, Karen O and Deerhunter are the obvious touchstones, though Gunn’s version feels more anxious than any of them, less concerned with cool. She’s already had a good year playing bigger…