Lonnie Gunn is on the rise

“Every dirty thing is pretty. Every pretty thing is dirty,” Lonnie Gunn shares when describing the beauty of seeing mould up close. What is commonly seen as an ugly fungal nuisance can resemble ice crystals or as she illustrates, “a beautiful painting.” It is an observation that parallels her debut EP, 2013 horsemeat scandal, which sees Gunn approaching the complex realities of a breakup, embracing the contradictions that make people human and the beauty in them, even at their worst.Across its seven songs, Gunn teeters between hushed and aggressive vocals, singing about baby teeth being knocked loose from their gums, torn pink butterfly wings, and swans preserved through taxidermy. “Yes, taxidermy is kind of gruesome, and if anyone did it to a human being, we’d be terrified and in shock. But when it’s this beautiful swan, there’s this weird element of distance there,” Gunn reflects. Those contrasting images are used by Gunn to explore feelings of uneasiness, grief, codependency, as well as the relationship she has with her own body that feels beyond her control. “I’m so grateful to have this body and to be able to use it to create and use it to move,” she explains. “But at the same...