About two months ago, I wrote about a new album by an artist I’d first heard of long ago and then somehow lost track of for years (twice, even, thanks to the weird way the internet works). This past weekend, while I was cleaning in preparation for having guests over, I finally turned away from the new album and worked my way through the band’s entire discography. I played all but one of them on heavy repeat for two whole days. I listened to so many Bug Hunter songs that the band skyrocketed to the top of my “most listened to” on Tidal and I wound up even downloading the albums so I could listen to them on the app while running my errands and without spending my entire month’s budget of cell data. A lot of the songs resonated with me, some of them catching my attention even more than the latest album did (which joined the rotation on my second day of cleaning) because of the vivid imagery. As a result of all this heavy listening and spending so much time doing manual labor that did not require much mental effort, I’ve got a lot of thoughts to share about all of Bug Hunter’s music.

One thing I kept thinking to myself as I listened to Bug Hunter’s first three Albums (Torn Between A Couple from 2017, The Rough Draft from 2018, and Bigger Than Myself from 2020) is that I am bringing half of the meaning to each song that I listen to. While the “true” meaning of a song (or any work of art produced by an artist) might seem clear, it is important to remember that the only glimpse we have into the creator’s mind is the work of art that we’re experiencing. This thought became almost a mantra for each of those first three albums because almost every track fell into one of two categories. The first one, including the songs that resonated with me the most, is what I’m calling “musical journaling” and it includes any song that seems to be a reflection on the singer’s life or the singer working through something in their head. The other category, encompassing pretty much every other song, I’m calling “addressing the listener” and that includes any songs that are about the relationship we have as singer and listener, the act of creating a song for someone else to listen to, or when the singer explicitly addresses the listener. While there are a few tracks that seem a little difficult to fit into either category, it is still easy to loosely associate them. Because almost all of these songs seem to address me, the listener, or to be a reflection of the singers life, it is easy to feel like I have learned something about the artist as I’ve listened.

While I’m sure that’s true (you can learn a lot about people from the art they create), I don’t think these songs are entirely autobiographical. I bet they take a decent amount of inspiration from the song writer’s life (there’s even some commentary in a few of the tracks that supports that idea), but there’s also a line in one of my favorite songs, “Toddler With A Slingshot,” that suggests that the singer has been exaggerating for a while now in order to make a greater splash with their music. So, aside from another track off the same album (Bigger Than Myself, which is currently my favorite of the four available albums), “Magic 8,” which includes some audio recorded from what sounds like a father’s speech at a wedding, the music seems less to be a journal of experiences, emotions, and thoughts and more a means of speaking about all of those things. It is very interesting to me, though, that all of the music still fits into those two categories I mentioned, even though there’s songs about falling in love, leaving bad relationships, growing up (which, coincidentally, was almost an entire category, but I was able to fit every song from that category into one of the other two, so I dropped it by the time I finished listening to my first pass through Torn Between A Couple), and the act of creation.

The latest album, released just a couple months ago, is a notable departure from the first three albums in that while the singer is speaking to someone in almost every song, they are not explicitly addressing the audience or themselves. While I could probably shoehorn them into one of those two categories, it would mean stretching them so much that there’s be no reason to even have the categories anymore. Bug Hunter’s latest album, Happiness (Without A Catch), is also notable in that the entire album tells a story. A largely metaphorical story whose meaning is left entirely in the hands of the listener far more than in any previous album, but a story all the same. While past albums tend to include songs that are incredibly similar in terms of themes, none of them weave a story together, one tasty little bit of metaphor and music at a time.

It was a very interesting experience, going from the latest album that is so different, to the first three albums (which I listened to in reverse chronological order because I figured I might as well, given that I’d started with the fourth album). While I’m tempted to say that I can see Bug Hunter’s growth play out in reverse through these songs, I’m not sure that’s actually accurate. It is simple and “close enough,” but not correct. What I really think I see is Bug Hunter’s growing confidence and self-assurance as a band. Some of this is supported by the songs about self-doubt and figuring this whole music thing out as the singer grows, some of which seem almost defensively sprinkled about in the first two albums, songs that are replaced by disclaimers and assertions of the self in the third album, and then are entirely absent in the fourth album (replaced by some incredibly clever lyrics, some really pleasant beats, and the first musical album I’ve ever listened to that needs a spoiler warning for the last two tracks on it).

I had the privilege to catch one of Bug Hunter’s live streams as it was happening, the first one the singer and main performer did on his YouTube channel after his latest album release, where he casually deflected questions about the meanings of songs and insisted that some of the meaning of them was up to the listener. Given that a new album had just released, I’m sure I wasn’t the only new live stream participant and that made it difficult to know if some of the questions were meant somewhat in jest from people who have attended some of the many live streams that Bug Hunter has done or if they were asked by people who were new to his work and unfamiliar with how literal or metaphorical his music was. I think Bug Hunter made it pretty clear during this livestream that much of what he has created is metaphorical, speaking more to the human experience in general than to specific events in his life, which has only added to the caution I feel when it comes to asserting anything about this music other than that I really liked it all. Sure, I might not put the first album, Torn Between A Couple on in my usual heavy rotation, but I did enjoy it. I just like all the later stuff so much more. Honestly, if almost the entirety of Bigger Than Myself, including the entire theme of the album, didn’t speak to me as much as it does, I would easily say I like each progressive album more than the one previous. Even with how much it resonates with me on a personal level, I have to say that Bigger Than Myself only ranks slightly higher than Happiness (Without A Catch) since it just feels so much like Bug Hunter fell into their groove and is making the kind of things that they really want to make, audience perceptions be damned.

Anyway, I’ve got dip and cookies to make, so I’m off to go take another spin through an album or two while I work in the kitchen and I have to recommend giving everything Bug Hunter has released a listen. Some of it may or may not be your style, but I suspect you’ll find something to love. There’s a lot there and there’s a lot to resonate with and I’m certain it’ll be worth your time.