by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The nationwide following that the now-defunct Montreal rock band Local Rabbits managed to build was devoted, but small. The reason might have been their contrary character. Their gestures and signals came off as grossly inappropriate to many indie-rock scene police in the ’90s. Competence and talent, enthusiasm and engagement, the absence of smug irony—for shame!

The Local Rabbits may be over and done with, but the music and ideas of Ben Gunning, who’d been the rough-edged yin to the smooth yang of the band’s other singer/guitarist/songwriter, Pete Elkas, still run against the grain. Gunning, in fact, now not only contradicts indie rock’s rewritten unwritten rules, but also his previous efforts, many of his fans and even his own damn self.

“I know that the music isn’t necessarily in step with what’s happening, with trends in the indie circuit,” Gunning says over the phone from Toronto, where he now lives. “I always have my back up, ready for my ego to take a beating, but I was actually quite happy [with public reaction to Beigy Blur, his solo debut released last March on the Internet label zunior.com]. As far as Rabbits fans go, I’m sure some were disappointed. My tastes are expanding, and I still think what I’m making is pop music, but it’s probably missing some elements that people enjoyed about the Rabbits—maybe things I didn’t value as much as they did.”

True, guitar plays a negligible role on an album heavy on keyboards, and new-jack R&B and forward jazz are as prominent as any quirk-rock cues (turns already hinted at on later Rabbits recordings). It’s all part of Gunning’s notion of progressive pop music, one that almost demands that he stand against rehash trends and the idolatry of the archaic, fauxhawked or white-striped as they may be.

“There are always exceptions, but on paper, I’m not interested in retro things. I like the idea of persuading somebody into new territory—or maybe offending them in some way. Not that I set out to do that, but that makes it vital in my mind.”

The sound of tomorrow today. Fine. But that doesn’t quite fit right with the lyrical intentions on Beigy Blur. Two themes dominate: frustration with people’s increasing disconnection from the natural world, and a chafing at the humiliating servitude the lower rungs of corporate culture demand.

So how does Gunning reconcile a distaste for crypto-conservative musical backtracking with equal qualms over society’s trajectory into artifice and isolation, eloquently articulated in the refrain, “The beauty of God/Is wasted in the hands of man”? He hasn’t yet, but his struggle to do so begets remarkable music.

“The next batch of tunes I’m working on are even more consistent lyrically, and they do deal with the way that hypocrisy, that contradiction I should say, plays out in real life. I’m trying even more to combine social awareness and philosophical ideas with the contradictions in a practical, day-to-day situation.

“Either I can just stop doing all this stuff and start meditating or something, or I can indulge in the madness of modern life, comment on it and critique it. But if I’m here, I’m not going to pretend I’m in medieval times. I’m going to use the tools around me to talk about what’s happening around me.”

With Mantler at Casa del Popolo on Saturday, Jan. 28, 9 p.m., $5

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