Echo & The Bunnymen – Evergreen

Echo finally got back with Les Pattinson on bass guitar...and the albums tracks are the better for it...its amazing how much a band can change with even one original member no longer there. This album is def on the top list for echo ...not only that but the song Evergreen was all over the local alternative radio stations in my area..

With a very Beatlesque homage in the spirit of ‘Paul Is Dead’, we find the photo for the album jacket to have been taken in Marrakech, very much echoing the cover of the 1980 album Crocodiles, featuring an image of the band against a backdrop of trees and a low slung classic 1969 Citroen DS21, however, in place of the band’s former drummer Pete De Fretias, who died in a motorcycle accident, the photo shows the remaining band members with a car, with rumors circulating that De Freitas had a collision with a Citroen back in 1989.

With the album being well praised, it met with mixed emotions, though with nine compelling songs, it is a for-sure keeper. McCulloch’s melodrama and vocal brooding are in the midst of fully flowing, while Will Sergeant’s guitar drifts effortlessly, seeming never to hang in one spot, injecting new and often half remembered hooks that go along way to giving the record a heartfelt earnest and honest feel. Yet still, others see the record as having had promise, though time and wind have laid it to rust, where today it lacks trend or hype, especially when stacked up agains the bands more quality work, leaving Evergreen to be forgotten.

Certainly I will admit that much appears to revolve around muscle memory here, where many of their riffs and string mixes come in one door and head out the other unchecked, unremembered, and useless for the most part. Yet still, I found nine of the tracks to be charismatic alluring refined cohesive and compelling enough to keep, making the album more than a handful of great tunes, though in the spirit of honesty, the tracks “Just A Touch Away,” “Too Young To Kneel” and “Forgiven” are simply so laden and burdensome, though not indulgent, which is the worst part, as indulgence can be forgiven that they bring the rest of the album down.

With fairness and open mindedness, Evergreen can be seen as a new page for Echo & The Bunnymen, a chance to right wrongs, to flesh out their personas, to rid themselves of the characters they’d become, where in that sense, the record achieves on all levels. As with all things Echo & The Bunnymen, this album is classic in its concept and nature, with a sound revolving around a specific and designed aesthetic, though an awful lot of reality slips in between the pages. It’s an album of grand ideas, guitar work that rides as chorus inflected, filled with regret and an unknowing in how to respond to that regret … where to my way of thinking, the album is moving down the path of timelessness.

*** The Fun Facts: Across cultures, trees, especially Evergreens are held as important spiritual symbols of immortality and eternal life because they retain their leaves throughout the winter.

Review by Jenell Kesler

This needs a vinyl release 180g, come on MOV, Back To Black or anyone else who does re-releases. We need it NOW>

Ten years after the last plate of one of the most important British new wave bands from the 1980s comes Echo & the Bunnymen with Evergreen and nothing has changed. Gone are the charming false vocals, the simple but beautiful songs and regularly prone to bombastic arrangements. Except the drummer Pete de Freitas died in 1989, his place is taken over by Michael Lee on the plate, we hear again guitarist Will Sergeant, bassist Les Pattinson and of course vocalist Ian McCulloch. Itself they find that they have as much right to exist if, for example, Oasis and Radiohead and right they are. Evergreen is just a good plate. Listen especially to the single Nothing Lasts Forever. (WvdZ)