From: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org (seven-seas-digest) To: seven-seas-digest@smoe.org Subject: seven-seas-digest V4 #459 Reply-To: seven-seas@smoe.org Sender: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org Precedence: bulk seven-seas-digest Monday, October 3 2005 Volume 04 : Number 459 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 07:28:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Al Nettles Subject: seven-seas Ian McCulloch's Voice and lyrics Clearly he can't sing the way he once could. Perhaps for single songs he can muster up the range to hit some of those notes, but for a whole show no way. His lower voice sounds very rich. The croon is great. I love it. Of course I miss the old abilities, but that's the way it goes. Artists grow old, bands change members & bands break up. Guided By Voices is no more. But Robert Pollard will keep making records. Now he's a guy who still writes killer lyrics whether they're abstract psychedelic aesthetic lyrics, confessional, narrative, etc. I gotta say Ian's words from the past few records he's done are pretty much all the same. Still waiting to be saved, dreaming on the stars above, wanting to head into the sun, waiting for someone to find him, still self-defeating. But I can accept this stage of his career. I love the new album and think it's still miles above most of the junk that's out there now. Blows the Coldplay album away. McCulloch must carry on. Thanks folks. Joe ===================================================================== Bunnymen Online Presence: http://www.bunnymenlist.com * http://www.bunnymen.info * http://www.bunnymen.com * http://www.fotolog.net/sgtfuzz/ * http://www.villiersterrace.com * http://www.angelfire.com/wy2/discog/ * http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-887128-89-6 * ====================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 11:54:57 -0400 From: wynd Subject: Re: seven-seas Re: Mac as crooner (Lasts Forever?) I love how Mac's voice is maturing-- he can still lean in and whisper, and then stand back and deliver, and he's got the best subtle timing. It still brings me in. Personally, Siberia is the album I wanted, a little "then" a little "now" as only they do it and it makes me proud to still be a fan. My only regret is that newer fans might not put in the time like us ye olde fans will, because it really does grow on you as you discover all the layers. Glad to hear Will so up-front. I miss their brave and perfect timing changes from the old days and I still miss Pete but I think it comes close (except for all the cymbals) to the driving not dragging rhythm he and Les would have brought. I think Les' stamp would have made it all absolutlely killer. woulda shoulda coulda. Kate On Saturday, October 1, 2005, at 01:05 PM, Theodore Turner wrote: > rom: Theodore Turner > Date: Sat Oct 1, 2005 1:05:28 PM America/New_York > To: seven-seas@smoe.org > Subject: seven-seas Re: Mac as crooner (Lasts Forever?) > Reply-To: seven-seas@smoe.org > > I think its fair to say that the more metaphysically poetic wailing > Mac of > the first batch of records has gone through a (time elapsed) stylistic > change to be the more confessional poetic crooning Mac we now hear. > This may > have something to do with certain losses in range as he's got older, > or it > could simply be that he's singing different words in a different way - > I > dunno. But ya, even as crooner you can hear that some of the nuance > depth of > his instrument has receded a bit, I guess Nothing Lasts Forever, but > maybe > it does, as I do agree that what has been lost in sheer scope is > compensated > for with an emotional timbre of nakedness that potentially opens new > doors > for him as a singer as well. I sometimes remind myself that I am > following > the career of an artist who (at his peak) was pretty singular in his > vocal > abilities and scope within the history of pop music. To push it as > hard as > he did for so may years must have been exhausting, if the dude wants > to drop > it down a few keys and fly a little closer to earth with as at this > point, > he's more than earned the extra leg room. I do know that the last time > I saw > them (2 years ago), he hit every note at the end of Ocean Rain with > time > machine like epiphanal glory, for 10 seconds I was both 17 again AND > lived > forever, not bad for Rock & Roll. > > Happy Saturday, > > Ted ===================================================================== Bunnymen Online Presence: http://www.bunnymenlist.com * http://www.bunnymen.info * http://www.bunnymen.com * http://www.fotolog.net/sgtfuzz/ * http://www.villiersterrace.com * http://www.angelfire.com/wy2/discog/ * http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-887128-89-6 * ====================================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 18:40:41 +0100 From: Barry Whiting Subject: seven-seas Heaven Up Here [Uncut Review] UNCUT has "Heaven Up Here" as their "All Time Classic" album for this month. I've scanned the article for your consumption (pls excuse any glitches due to the software reader). - -- At ease, Barry ====================================================================== ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN'S new album, Siberia, is being touted as a return to the band's early-'80s heyday, allegedly re-creating the spirit of their second album, Heaven Up Here. The fact that Siberia finds Hugh Jones back in the producer's chair for the first time since he skippered the Heaven sessions supposedly lends the theory additional plausibility. The claims might sound more persuasive if they hadn't also been made for the last Bunnymen album, 2001's Flowers. A comparable rose-tinted revisionism has descended upon Bunnymen contemporaries Simple Minds, whose new LP, Black & White, is apparently all their greatest moments recombined. These claims are sadly typical of our era of cheap nostalgia and lazy recycling. Siberia is a respectable dose of post-millennial Bunnymen, but with only 50 per cent of the original band still on board (guitarist Will Sergeant and the totemic lan McCulloch), it's fatuous to suggest that the perverse mystique of the original group can somehow be reconstituted. It only takes a brief spin through Heaven Up Here for the Bunny magic to shake loose, chilly and foreboding yet suffused with dark humour. "Bounds? Of course we know no bounds", McCulloch sings on "With A Hip", and while the singer's talent for hyperbole has always been clear, on this occasion he was spectacularly right. From the nail-biting opening bars of first track "Show Of Strength", where it sounded like the band were taking a few deep breaths before hurling themselves off a precipice into an infinite unknown, it was clear the quartet had taken a huge stride forward from their first album, Crocodiles. Erratic production by Bill Drummond and David Balfe notwithstanding, the latter had been strong enough to be hailed as "one of the contemporary rock albums of the year" by NME. But despite its powerful songs and the quartet's distinctive musicianship, it sounds like a garage band finding its feet. Heaven Up Here, by contrast, was living proof of McCulloch's claim that the Bunnvmen were "an oceans and mountains band", with its dark canyons of sound and soaring vistas of imagery. The musical content was mirrored by its equally elemental artwork, Brian Griffins sleeve photography silhouetting the band on a windswept northwestern beach against a stormy purple and gunmetal dusk. It was one of those episodes of collective chemistry that a band is always praying for, and the Bunnymen seized the moment with all eight hands. As their publicist (and Uncut contributor) Mick Houghton recalled: "The Bunnymen were like their own cell at this time, their own Masonic lodge - there was such a sense of purpose that, for a while, it seemed they could do no wrong." Hugh Jones, elevated to the job of producer following his engineering role on Crocodiles, deserves credit for channelling the band's flood of ideas and capturing them in widescreen multi-track majesty. Nonetheless, the band themselves were feeling confident about their objectives in the studio and wanted some say in the matter, hence the production credit: "Hugh Jones in association with the Bunnymen". As with Crocodiles, they- recorded at Rockfield in rural Monmouthshire. The location felt appropriate for the band's vision of themselves, which was more attuned to the rhythms of wind and stars than to the politicking of the music industry. Where their previous recordings had seemed brittle and metallic, here they acquired an imperial opulence. This was an ingenious feat, since the band were still using the same guitar/bass/drums/voice combination, but managed to extract leverage from a skilful rearrangement of the instrumental hierarchy. "The sound is much better on that LP," said Sergeant. "Les [Pattinson, bass] is more up in the mix. and both he and Pete [de Freitas, drummer] had their own styles. They'd play what they imagined." As McCulloch pointed out, Pattinson's bass frequently provided the core of the tracks. "Les would usually come up with a bassline, always circular, and he'd get into that unchanging pattern, and then we'd add all these spiralling note sequences," Mac explained. "'A Promise' was just one chord going round and round." "Over The Wall" also benefited from the Pattinson Effect. "Les had that bassline that runs through it," Sergeant noted. "And we'd add weird stuff over the top. There are lots of quite funky, choppy bits on it - all those scratchy sounds." Meanwhile the instrumental sounds were fitted into a vaulting overall perspective. Weird howling noises made your scalp prickle during "Show Of Strength", while synthetic depth charges gave a sense of unspeakable threat to "Over The Wall" and sustained metallic drones enhanced the yearning, questing quality of "A Promise". The scope and depth of the finished album rendered easy comparisons redundant. There'd been a tendency among music writers to pair off the Bunnymen with Joy Division (both gloomy, both from the northwest, both rising from the teeming chaos of post-punk), but if there ever had been any validity in the comparison, the range of emotional tones beginning to glow through the Bunnymen's music ended the debate. Joy Division had cornered the market in bleakness, but on a track like "All My Colours", with its acoustic guitar, delicate woodwind and romantic melodicism, the Bunnies were already looking forward to their commercial heyday with "The Killing Moon and "Seven Seas". The Bunnymen could do gloom - "As prospects diminish, as nightmares swell / Some pray for heaven while we live in hell" ("The Disease") - but they were never suicidal. Mac's existential despair in "Over The Wall" offered a glimpse of Sinatra and the line, "I'm walking in the rain to end this misery" was pinched from Del Shannon's "Runaway". "I always said the second album would be a hundred times better than Crocodiles, and it was," Mac announced. But, self-mythologising aside, the group's own assessments of Heaven Up Here bear out the feeling you get from hearing the record: that this was a special LP that expressed the band's essential core. "It was a great period, the best time in the band," said Sergeant. "It all came so easy." "Heaven Up Here was the most exciting album to make," added McCulloch. "I think we were on a roll after Crocodiles, and it seemed so easy and natural to us." ADAM SWEETING ====================================================================== ===================================================================== Bunnymen Online Presence: http://www.bunnymenlist.com * http://www.bunnymen.info * http://www.bunnymen.com * http://www.fotolog.net/sgtfuzz/ * http://www.villiersterrace.com * http://www.angelfire.com/wy2/discog/ * http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-887128-89-6 * ====================================================================== ------------------------------ End of seven-seas-digest V4 #459 ********************************