Dirty Little Rabbits: Simon

Dirty Little Rabbits is the new side project of Slipknot's Shawn Crahan. The band wasn't created to replace Slipknot for Crahan, just to give him a different outlet to create music. Rather than forming another metal band, Dirty Little Rabbits is a little more arthouse. There are some heavier beats, but for the most part, it's fairly pop grooving guitars and melodic vocals.

The Rabbits is fronted by Stella Katsoudas. Stella has had a roller coaster of a musical career. Starting off in the Chicago music scene, Stella has done backing vocals for bands like Ministry and Chemlab. She also fronted her band Sister Soleil through two albums. Afterwords she dipped her toes into the waters of pop pinup princess with her Stella Soleil re-invention. Upon that missed mark, Stella, living in LA worked with a few other bands before being contacted by old friend Crahan to front the Rabbits. Sister Soleil and Slipnot used to play a lot of shows together.

So, that's some hefty back story. Let's get into this album. Released in early 2009, Simon, is the Rabbits second ep, following 2007's Breeding. It's a 6 track ep that starts with a pretty moody instrumental track. The second song is You Say, kind of a bluesy dirge that has a nice use of organ to help set the mood. Stella's dark and brooding delivery of the lyrics is really well done and takes the track in a nice direction. Following is what could be considered the single, the track Hello. This song to me almost sounds like the phone conversation between Crahan and Stella when he phoned her to become the singer for Dirty Little Rabbits. That's just how it sounds to me. Then we have by far the worst song on the album, I'm So Beautiful. This song just isn't good. It seems like a backlash from Stella over being almost a pop princess. The lyrics are laughable at points (I've got OJ's lawyers and they love me!) and her delivery is a little too loopy and over the top. You hated being a pop princess, we get it. The album ends with two good but not overly standout tracks Happy and Same Mistakes.

While I do like the album overall, I kind of miss the vocal depth that Stella displayed in Sister Soleil. Musically the album is pretty solid and lyrically it only really seems to derail on that one song. Sure for a six track ep that's pretty substantial, but I don't really mind. This is a good album overall and I enjoy it much more than I did seeing the band live. I hadn't heard the music at the time and I'm not sure that I got it. So join the ever growing following and pick up The Dirty Little Rabbits Simon ep. It's not the future of music, but it's entertaining, and that's all it needs to be.