From: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org (seven-seas-digest) To: seven-seas-digest@smoe.org Subject: seven-seas-digest V3 #161 Reply-To: seven-seas@smoe.org Sender: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Precedence: bulk seven-seas-digest Tuesday, May 4 2004 Volume 03 : Number 161 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 13:58:39 -0500 From: "Ted Turner" Subject: RE: seven-seas Preston School HI Everybody: Long time Bunny fan & loud Bunny Champion Spiral Stairs (ex-Pavement) has had his new Preston School of Industry record "Monsoon" out for a few months now. "'Monsoon' continues in the vein of many of Spirals classic songs, setting a confident, effortless beat to a literate and mischievous rock sound as informed by Echo and the Bunnymen, the Clean, and the Fall as by Neil Young, Lou Reed, and John Prine. But while 'All This Sounds Gas' was largely an assortment of songs hed had laying around over time, these songs were written specifically for 'Monsoon', with no baggage or ghosts, and with all the looseness and confidence that suggests. " I think most of you will dig it as much as I do. more info at: http://www.prestonschoolofindustry.com/index.html Enjoy, Ted Turner - --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.672 / Virus Database: 434 - Release Date: 04/28/2004 ====================================== http://www.bunnymenlist.com ====================================== ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 14:05:03 -0600 From: "K. F. Smith" Subject: seven-seas http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/profile/270725/?p=1 This is several months old, but I don't think it has been posted here before (I believe I would have remembered the Ocean Rain comments): ECHO CHAMBER Echo and the Bunnymen reissues are a mix of brilliant and wretched By James Healy UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER February 5, 2004 Reissue mill Rhino Records dusts off the first five albums from Echo and the Bunnymen with meticulous remasterings that catch the Liverpudlians in their finest - and worst - moments. From the searing "Crocodiles" to the deadly dull "Ocean Rain," the sweeping retrospective traces a band that went from warm but quirky to icily aloof in little more than five years. CD review rating "Crocodiles" The later fare, sadly, bears many of the wretched, tell-tale signs of the '80s and would have been better left in the crypt. But the first three albums - - and especially the debut "Crocodiles" and its brilliant follow-up, "Heaven Up Here" - sound startlingly fresh, despite the fact they, too, were recorded more than two decades ago. What makes the collection truly sparkle, however, is the fine array of bonus tracks (on which the following ratings are based): live material, including an early EP; unreleased songs and B-sides; alternate takes of the band's more popular songs; one demo song; and cover tunes. But even the bonus tracks run from daring to dreary. CD review rating "Heaven Up There" "Crocodiles", from 1980, is the best of the lot - with or without its bonus material. Alluring but stark, it captures the edginess of the band just after it trashed the drum machine, dubbed Echo (from which it took its name), and wisely enlisted the very capable Pete De Freitas. The album's original 10 songs are rounded out with six bonus tracks, including an early version of "Villiers Terrace" (whose disturbing images of madness allude to Hitler), and the superb, four-song EP "Shine So Hard," on which De Freitas plays as if driven by the devil himself (particularly on the stunning version of "All That Jazz"). CD review rating "Porcupine" The band's sophomore release, 1981's "Heaven Up Here", found the band making quite a leap forward. The album is denser and darker, but just as deadly as its predecessor. Among its five bonus tracks are a long version of the B-side "Broke My Neck," and live versions of the twitchy "Show of Strength" and the moody "Disease." CD review rating "Ocean Rain" "Porcupine", from 1982, is lighter in spirit than the first two albums, but quite nearly as catchy. The pace, however, is somewhat sluggish - an early warning of the frost that set in on the next two albums. Its seven bonus songs include the B-side "Fuel"; five alternate versions of album tracks (three of which are previously unreleased); and "Never Stop (Discotheque)," originally released as a single only. The shlocky 1984 release "Ocean Rain" included orchestral arrangements that put most of the songs knee-deep in cheese (although, to be fair, the sessions also yielded the catchy, foreboding "The Killing Moon"). The album's eight bonus tracks include the "Life at Brian's Sessions," recorded in 1983 at Liverpool Cathedral for the British television show "Play at Home - Life at Brian's." Adding harpsichord, sitar and clarinet to the mix, the band is clearly in transition - and seemingly in a fog, as evidenced by the dreadful, downbeat cover of the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" and an extended, but diluted, version of "Villiers Terrace." CD review rating "Echo and the Bunnymen" By the time "Echo and the Bunnymen" was released in 1985, the band had taken on a pop veneer, with such happy-face fare as "The Game," the infectious "Lips Like Sugar" and the Doors-like "Bedbugs and Ballyhoo" (Ray Manzarek, formerly of the Doors, is one of three keyboardists appearing on the album). Bonus tracks include extended and early versions of "Bring on the Dancing Horses" and a cover of the Doors' "Soul Kitchen," which isn't nearly as inspired as L.A. punk band X's 1980 version. ====================================== http://www.bunnymenlist.com ====================================== ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 14:58:06 -0600 From: "K. F. Smith" Subject: seven-seas reissues review "Serene pallor" is not a phrase I would use in describing HUH ... but here it is: http://blackmailismylife.blogspot.com/2004_04_25_blackmailismylife_archive.ht ml Crocodiles, Echo & the Bunnymen's debut, exemplifies the transition from extroverted punk to alienated self-indulgence in British pop. Originally produced by self-proclaimed "working class zeroes" The Chameleons, it bears the imprint of studious anomie, Will Sergeant's alternating arcing and skittering guitars mixed with MacCulloch's throaty vocals to conjure images befitting Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year and the much talked about dark psychedelia of The Doors. "Villiers Terrace" may be the setting for the entire album, depicting the lurid goings-on of speechless addicts "rolling 'round on the carpet/biting wool and pulling strings," while the rest of the songs address the apathy and inertia in the midst of these escapist binges; Sergeant discusses the reality in the liner notes, stating that Hitler went off his nut following the non-aggression pact with the Czechs and rolled around on the floor with duplicitous glee. Songs like "Pride" and "Rescue" are loaded with question marks too; the contemplative aspect out-mans the active, and so they huddle, waiting for Supermen instead, doubly victims of ennui and drug-induced inertia. The additional tracks finish the album without interrupting the tone and tempo of the original artifact, culminating with the Shine So Hard EP. The last track, "Over the Wall" features MacCulloch pleading with the audience: "I can't sleep at night/How I wish you'd hold me tight/Hold me tight/To my logical limit." And like aural dopesickness, you tremble afterward hoping to find some way to get well. That song reappears breathlessly on Heaven Up Here. Hugh Jones and the Bunnymen paired to produce an album shorter on urgency, but expansive on atmospherics, thus coalescing their signature sound. Layers of vocal and guitar overdubs fall over themselves in hollow solemnity. Pete De Freitas' drums on "It Was A Pleasure" are recorded dry, and his patterns punctuate the gloomy reverb in a sharp staccato. An immaculate studio product, the sonic distances to the ear create interesting tensions and spaces that carry the album forward. It's worth mentioning that Mark E. Smith gets credited in the liner notes as "a kindred spirit and fellow curmudgeon;" years afterward Smith said he was annoyed by the Echo & the Bunnymen's "let's all be friends" routine. Smith's role regardless, the Bunnymen affect their sinister poetry on tracks like "The Disease" and "All My Colours," but here the inertia isn't social; rather, it's increasingly musical, fetishizing the best elements of their chosen aesthetic, which they would later apotheosize in Porcupine and Ocean Rain. The cover shot pictures the band on a day off, standing on a South Wales beach, the water calmly pooling at their feet. With Heaven Up Here, the once threatening waters subside, and the creative currents lap placidly at the shores of Crocodiles' greatness, the sunset enveloped by clouds and night's inevitability gives rise to "The Killing Moon." The additional live tracks validate a band maturing in public. The live version of "Show of Strength" features Sergeant's metallic pick attack, MacCulloch's lunging vocals making the flecks of froth almost visible on the microphone, and brings De Freitas' aggressive drumming to bear on the otherwise serene pallor that distinguishes their sophomore record from the stadium bombast of their contemporaries. Echo & the Bunnymen's eponymous fifth album and the final installment of the reissue series lacks both the imaginative intensity of Crocodiles and the totalizing sweep of Heaven Up Here. By this time the Bunnymen were at their jowlsiest, having grown soft on their success, substituting pathos for ethos as they ascended to their hermetic Liverpudlian Valhalla. Max Bell's notes are refreshing in their candor, stating that "Over Your Shoulder" was "an attempt to put the upstart Jesus & Mary Chain in their place." The song's nice -- a piss-take version of "Just Like Honey"-- but these rearguard actions are aesthetically retrograde, and it shows in the album's overall spottiness. To the novice some of those spots will ring familiar tones; the colossal "Lips Like Sugar" became a staple on "modern rock" radio prior to ClearChannel declaring alterna-hegemony, courtesy of the FCC. Overall, the album sounds like the second half of 24 Hour Party People, as Tony Wilson globe-tripped on constant cocaine high, blithering through his life, accompanied exclusively by the Happy Mondays. That is to say, wildly uneven and somewhat self-important, shot through with brilliant pop songs. But by this time, the Bunnymen had reached their limits interpersonally and musically. MacCulloch left the band, and the rest pressed on without him. The music scene had congealed in Britain, and the modern rock sound became a reification to be replicated, overproduced and broadcast to American listening publics as the newest variation on album rock. And that's where the dream ends: the inspiration to shake off ennui collapsed on itself and returned mimetically to origins in the quotidian and moribund, only to be reinterpreted by Interpol and British Sea Power nearly twenty years later. ====================================== http://www.bunnymenlist.com ====================================== ------------------------------ End of seven-seas-digest V3 #161 ********************************