by Michael Hartt.A year ago last week, I was in Liverpool. No, not the western Sydney suburb but the real one in England: home of the Mersey, scousers and some band from the 60s. In my week there, I did most of the usual tourist things – mostly Beatle-related manoeuvres – but it was another band from Liverpool I’d come to see.
Echo & The Bunnymen were marking their 30th anniversary and their hometown’s year as the European Capital of Culture by playing their 1984 album, Ocean Rain, in full, augmented by an orchestra. The album, considered to be the band’s creative pinnacle, was an amazing thing to hear live. The sound was dark, lush and haunting and captured everything that made the album, and the Bunnymen as a band, one of the best of the 80s.
After the album’s release, it was really never the same for the band. It took them three years to produce its follow-up and they have never since been able to recapture the majesty and mystery of Ocean Rain and its three predecessors.
The Fountain is Echo & The Bunnymen’s eleventh studio album (tenth if you forget about the one they did without Ian McCulloch) and their fifth since reforming in 1997. It’s their first album in four years and arrives after a long gestation that saw the band change record companies twice.
The album opens with 'I Think I Need It Too', the first single. The song soars in a way that the band hasn’t done since 'Lips Like Sugar' in 1987. A particular highlight through this song, and indeed through the entire album, is the guitar playing of Will Sergeant. It’s an electric performance that displays why he’s one of the main factors that has always separated the band from others.
It’s also the band’s poppiest album since 1987. It’s almost all upbeat and positively glows. The tracks 'Proxy'and 'Life Of A Thousand Crimes' sound like they could come from any number of modern indie pop outfits doing the rounds at the moment except for the fact that none of them have a vocalist as brooding and striking as McCulloch. He has a voice that few could replicate and many wish they could. A particularly good vocal performance comes in the title track.
This album is an enjoyable one but it seems to fall short in a few areas. Like a lot of the band’s later work, it’s just that little bit more ordinary that the atmosphere that exists in Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine and Ocean Rain. If it was anyone else, it was be a great album but because it’s the Bunnymen (a special band), it’s alright. At least we’ll always have Ocean Rain in Liverpool.
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