From: owner-seven-seas@smoe.org (seven-seas-digest) To: seven-seas-digest@smoe.org Subject: seven-seas-digest V5 #178 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, July 4 2006 Volume 05 : Number 178 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2006 07:59:38 +1200 From: "Kristin Smith" Subject: seven-seas chicagotribune.com http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-0607030190jul03,1,5812 024.story?coll=chi-ent_music-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true The style of Bunnymen echoing in younger bands By Eric R. Danton Tribune Newspapers: The Hartford Courant Published July 3, 2006 It hasn't escaped Will Sergeant's notice that a host of young bands bear at least a passing sonic resemblance to his group, the '80s post-punk mainstay Echo & the Bunnymen. "There's loads of bands that sound like us," the guitar player says. It's a grandiose sound, fitting gloomy music to soaring vocals and subtly celebratory lyrics. Critic Simon Reynolds called it "Big Music" in his book "Rip It Up and Start Again" (Penguin 2005), an examination of post-punk music between 1978 and 1984. "We just started doing that because our influences were like Bowie and the Velvet Underground and the Doors, and it all came out sounding like Echo & the Bunnymen," Sergeant says. Echo's acolytes include Richard Ashcroft and Doves, along with the current buzz acts Editors and the Arcade Fire. "I like it when other bands say they're influenced by us," Sergeant says in his quiet voice, inflected with a Liverpool accent. "It's kind of like a way of passing on the message." That's not to say Sergeant spends a lot of time listening to them, and he can't help but scoff at his contemporaries who profess their love for whatever bands happen to be cool this month, dismissing it as a belabored effort to seem hip and edgy. "I think bands of our age or whatever going on about, `Oh, I really like the Arctic Monkeys, or I love the Arcade Fire,' I think they're full of [expletive]. Like they're trendy," he says. "Like Elton John, on the [expletive] telly, making like he's really into the Dirty Pretty Things or one of these bands. It's like -- oh, yeah, sure." Echo & the Bunnymen doesn't have much time to chase trends anyway. Although the band had split up for much of the '90s, Echo has maintained an active tour schedule since its 1997 comeback, and all of the musicians have side projects (Sergeant enjoys moonlighting as a club deejay, for example). The group continues to record too. Echo's 2005 album, "Siberia," drew favorable comparisons to its best work of the '80s, albums with such names as "Heaven Up Here" and "Ocean Rain." Sergeant and singer Ian McCulloch co-wrote all of the songs in a process the guitarist says isn't much different from how the pair worked 25 years ago. Sometimes each brings in his own ideas and they flesh them out together; other times they'll sit down and play guitar and see what happens. "The only thing we don't do now is kind of jam as a band," Sergeant says. That's because the older version of Echo doesn't hang out much as a band, and personnel shifts -- including the 1999 departure of original bassist Les Pattinson, who quit to care for his elderly mother -- mean McCulloch and Sergeant are the only permanent members, and they're not keen to share creative control with a rotating cast of band mates. "We want it to be our thing, really," Sergeant says. "We're both sort of control-freaky people." ===================================================================== Bunnymen Online Presence: http://www.bunnymenlist.com * http://www.bunnymen.info http://www.bunnymen.com * http://www.fotolog.net/sgtfuzz/ http://bunnymen.nexuswebs.net/ * http://www.angelfire.com/wy2/discog/ * ====================================================================== ------------------------------ End of seven-seas-digest V5 #178 ********************************