Artist: Echo & The Bunnymen
Album: The Fountain
Year: 2009
Grade: 1.5 pretzels
No band wants to be saddled with a “sell-by date” by critics and fans. In a perfect world, great bands would keep releasing great music until they decided to call it a day. However, that idealistic dream is far removed from the reality of things. As much as us critics can sit here and discuss how an artist’s latest album sounds lazy or weak, the musicians themselves rely on releases to, y’know, make money and feed themselves and all that. This is a reality of being a working musician, especially once your glory years have faded into the past. However, this doesn’t make the albums in question any easier to listen to.
As much as I love their albums from the 80s, I’m the first person to admit that Echo & The Bunnymen should have packed it in back in 1989, when drummer Pete de Freitas died in a tragic motorcycle crash. De Freitas was a huge part of the Bunnymen’s sound and there was simply no way they’d ever be the same again. After an awkward album in 1990 (without singer Ian McCulloch to boot), they did actually break up. Yet, there was another reunion in 1996, this time with McCulloch back in the fold and it’s this version of the band that has limped along painfully over the past decade. The Fountain is their fourth album since then and it only reaffirms what any longtime Bunnymen fan already knows: the magic is gone and shows no signs of every coming back.
First, you’ve got McCulloch’s ragged voice. His original soaring bellow has been shredded by years of smoking and drinking and rock & roll lifestyle. It’s tragic to hear his once-majestic pipes reduced to something resembling gravel being mixed in a blender. His croaking and gasping gives these songs a sadly unintentional sense of sadness and futility. The Bunnymen are still writing the same evocative ballads as always…but the voice behind them has disintegrated beyond all recognition. When McCulloch asks “Don’t You Know Who I Am?”, he doesn’t realize how much irony he’s just stumbled into.
You also can’t ignore the fact that these songs just…well…blow viciously. There’s no polite way around it. There’s nothing memorable about 90% of the material here. Despite a bright, glistening production job, there’s just no substance. The opening “Think I Need It Too” is three-and-a-half minutes of fake drama and bombast, disguising Will Sergeant’s disappointingly simplistic guitar figures and the song’s tendency to just repeat itself over and over again. Even more hideous is “Shroud Of Turin”, featuring lyrics so appalling bad (“I love that you’re from Turin, I love that sweet sack you’re in”) that one wonders how nobody said anything during the recording sessions. McCulloch’s words have degenerated to the point of obnoxious old-man-puns. Please, make it stop. Be merciful!
Listening to The Fountain is almost physically painful for a huge Bunnymen fan such as myself. There’s just enough of the old Bunnymen here to remind the listener that this actually is the same band that recorded “The Killing Moon”. McCulloch and Sergeant have not aged gracefully and this dreary album is just the latest affirmation of that. Although there is a brief moment of hope towards the album’s end, in the form of the rolling “Drivetime”, The Fountain gives Bunnymen fans no reason to keep any last shreds of faith we may have in this band. Echo & The Bunnymen are over. Most fans have accepted this. Now, if only we could get the band to agree with us…
As much as I love their albums from the 80s, I’m the first person to admit that Echo & The Bunnymen should have packed it in back in 1989, when drummer Pete de Freitas died in a tragic motorcycle crash. De Freitas was a huge part of the Bunnymen’s sound and there was simply no way they’d ever be the same again. After an awkward album in 1990 (without singer Ian McCulloch to boot), they did actually break up. Yet, there was another reunion in 1996, this time with McCulloch back in the fold and it’s this version of the band that has limped along painfully over the past decade. The Fountain is their fourth album since then and it only reaffirms what any longtime Bunnymen fan already knows: the magic is gone and shows no signs of every coming back.
First, you’ve got McCulloch’s ragged voice. His original soaring bellow has been shredded by years of smoking and drinking and rock & roll lifestyle. It’s tragic to hear his once-majestic pipes reduced to something resembling gravel being mixed in a blender. His croaking and gasping gives these songs a sadly unintentional sense of sadness and futility. The Bunnymen are still writing the same evocative ballads as always…but the voice behind them has disintegrated beyond all recognition. When McCulloch asks “Don’t You Know Who I Am?”, he doesn’t realize how much irony he’s just stumbled into.
You also can’t ignore the fact that these songs just…well…blow viciously. There’s no polite way around it. There’s nothing memorable about 90% of the material here. Despite a bright, glistening production job, there’s just no substance. The opening “Think I Need It Too” is three-and-a-half minutes of fake drama and bombast, disguising Will Sergeant’s disappointingly simplistic guitar figures and the song’s tendency to just repeat itself over and over again. Even more hideous is “Shroud Of Turin”, featuring lyrics so appalling bad (“I love that you’re from Turin, I love that sweet sack you’re in”) that one wonders how nobody said anything during the recording sessions. McCulloch’s words have degenerated to the point of obnoxious old-man-puns. Please, make it stop. Be merciful!
Listening to The Fountain is almost physically painful for a huge Bunnymen fan such as myself. There’s just enough of the old Bunnymen here to remind the listener that this actually is the same band that recorded “The Killing Moon”. McCulloch and Sergeant have not aged gracefully and this dreary album is just the latest affirmation of that. Although there is a brief moment of hope towards the album’s end, in the form of the rolling “Drivetime”, The Fountain gives Bunnymen fans no reason to keep any last shreds of faith we may have in this band. Echo & The Bunnymen are over. Most fans have accepted this. Now, if only we could get the band to agree with us…
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