The Chicago-based indie-rock group Beach Bunny, known for upbeat hits “Sports”, “Prom Queen” and “Cloud 9”, puts out music with light/summery beats paired with more emotionally charged lyrics about the challenges and pitfalls of life.

Their third studio album “Tunnel Vision” follows the same structure of their earlier releases, especially with their lighter opening and closing tracks, “Mr. Predictable” and “Cycles,” which sound like ‘80s pop hits.

The album brings sounds reminiscent of the great alt bands of the ’90s and early 00s like Green Day, but Beach Bunny has one thing those bands did not have: the perspective of a soprano, exhausted from the pressures of a modern world. Songs like the title track “Tunnel Vision” tell the story of a young woman looking to find herself, until the following track, “Clueless,” which may be the most important of the album, as lead singer Lili Trifilio reveals that she’s 30 and yet to find herself.

“Growing pains are only growing, it’s a new reality…Was it better? I was younger / Different problems, different names / Was it perfect? Was it simple? / Was it more or less the same?” Trifilio sings in “Clueless.”

In “Vertigo,” Trifilio begins her path towards accepting that life will never get better, shouting, “I thought when I was older / I would be on top / I thought the jealousy would drop / but it never stops.”

Following “Vertigo,” the album takes more of a grunge tone with “Violence” that sounds like its name suggests. The music takes the feeling of the lyrics, giving listeners no escape from the emotional turmoil Trifilio seems to be in.

The pent-up anger from the album seems to burst out all at once in the penultimate track, “Just Around the Corner.” Every part of the song feels like an attack on the society responsible for her pain from it rhythm and tempo, to the lyrics as Trifilio shouts, “But you can’t her brain is fried / the internet broke her mind / The one percent, cut the line / The government doesn’t care who dies.” 

The track is a brilliant climax, coming just before the end, allowing the final song “Cycles” to close out an album with dark subject matter with a light feel.

“Tunnel Vision” has the chance to spawn generations of fans as it reminds younger Gen-Xers and millennials of the music they raised themselves on as teens and connects to the emotional challenges of Gen-Z as they begin adulthood.