Willie J Healey - Bunny

There’s a timeless quality to Willie J Healey’s penmanship that, over the course of now three albums, has cemented his status as your favourite songwriter’s favourite young songwriter. Alex Turner loves him; Florence + The Machine took him on tour; Jamie T is such a fan that he even pops up on the warm lilt of ‘Thank You’ - a track that contains many of the hallmarks (gospel choir backing, funk-fuelled bass, a general sense of nostalgic ease) that populate ‘Bunny’ as a whole. Indeed, where WJH’s first two albums cast the singer as a modern day successor to George Harrison’s richly melodic solo work (and still, opener ‘Woke Up Smiling’ sits in this realm), ‘Bunny’ often strikes for a different side of the ‘70s. ‘Dreams’ is funky in a Stevie Wonder Moog synthesiser way; ‘Tiger Woods’ is a sultry slow jam that thankfully has little to do with the US golf supremo, while ‘Chrome’ utilises his falsetto and baritone to create a pseudo-conversation with himself. Best is ‘Sure Feels Good’: one of those intensely melodically satisfying tracks that hark back to the golden age of the skill. We’ll ignore that ‘Black Camaro’ brings to mind Gabrielle’s ‘Rise’; ‘Bunny’, for the most part, justifies why Healey’s little black book is quite so heaving.