The Very Best Of Echo & The Bunnymen - Echo & the Bunnymen Album Review

Album Review

Best of comp from Liverpudians Echo and the Bunnymen, with two non-chart singles from 2001-2006. In all, the alternative -rock Scouse quartet scored 18 chart entries, none of which were toppers. They came close with The Cutter and Nothing Lasts Forever, both peaking at 8. Their albums sold well too, highest was 1983s Porcupine. Their trademark fusion of gloomy post-punk neo-psychadelia influenced by the Doors (here they cover People Are Strange to prove it), they turned into a cult band. Led by 'Mac The Mouth' Ian McCulloch, their moody atmospheric music combined punk's effusiveness with the Doors' poetic theatricality which set them apart from their contemporaries in the UK, but fell short of repeating their home-grown success in Europe and USA. Nevertheless, their influence is significant, with bands like Suede and Coldplay giving them a nod. Echo...was formed after Mac was booted out of an early incarnation of Teardrop Explodes. Originally a trio with bassist Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson guitar, backed by Echo, a drum machine, only to be dropped for human drummer Pete De Freitas. So the line up was complete for their cavalier attitude to the music scene. Laid in non-chronological order, we get all the singles that charted up to 2001, and two others, this is a bumper collection for those who, like me, welcomed the end of punk, and a new dawn of music into the 80s. Taking three years to get to the Top Ten, their early hits were bass heavy rip-roarers.

It took four years for the change: a more mature sound, with the arrival of the more subtle and expansive The Killing Moon, a genuine classic alt-pop song. The equally impressive Silver fared less well and successive singles Seven Seas to People Are Strange kept them out of the Top 20 until a reunion in 1997 and Nothing Lasts Forever, that brought a new generation of fans.

Elly Roberts