Echo & The Bunnymen – ‘Siberia’ (Cooking Vinyl) Released 19/09/05

On this, their eighth album together as Echo & The Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant continue their quest for the sublime and the beautiful by returning to the more instinctive approach to songwriting that brought them together back in those halcyon days of hanging around Probe and Eric’s.  Working with producer Hugh Jones for the first time since 1981’s ‘Heaven Up Here’ and with a band that McCulloch describes as ‘the closest to the old Bunnymen we’ve ever had’, it’s back-to-basics for the Scouse nearly-men.  But is it a backward step?

There’s nothing wrong with being reflective as the years pass by, as the dignified lyrical exploration of innocence and experience on ‘Parthenon Drive’ so ably shows ("Spinning around at 33/I was trying to find the worth in me…  Here I am at the age of 5/I found parts of life on Parthenon Drive").  Musically though, the song is so desperate a rehash of ‘The Cutter’ that it brings to mind Paul McCartney’s cringe-worthy attempts to recreate the sounds of The Beatles (do we still need him now he’s (over) 64?) on his latter-day albums.  Too often on this album Jones’s bass-heavy production detracts from a musically accomplished performance (McCulloch, Sergeant and Liverpool bass legend Pete Wilkinson sound peerless at times), and good ideas frequently go nowhere, as on the Neil Young-like ‘Of A Life’ and the Spector-lite ‘Makes Us Blind’.

That’s not to say that the duo’s revisiting of a more carefree time doesn’t work on every track: ‘In the Margins’ recalls the moody, focused pop of 1984’s Ocean Rain, and on ‘Scissors In The Sand’ a growling McCulloch reminds us that he still is capable of invoking the spirit of Jim Morrison at his most sneering.  Ironically, it’s the gentler, stripped down sound of the modern Bunnymen that really hits home – ‘Everything Kills You’ provides us with McCulloch’s finest melody and delivery on the album and closer ‘What If We Are’ is a gorgeous piano, strings and acoustic ballad, with the intimate, fragile refrain "Tell me, hey/how to hit rock bottom" echoing in our hearts long after the last chords have died out. 

And so, it just goes to show that you can never go back.  It was McCulloch himself who famously asserted that ‘Nothing Ever Lasts Forever’; and ‘Siberia’ demonstrates that The Bunnymen would have done well to heed their own advice.