"Evergreen" Don't Let It Get You Down In My Time I Want to be There (When You Come) Evergreen I'll Fly Tonight Nothing Lasts Forever Baseball Bill Altamont Just a Touch Away Empire State Halo Too Young to Kneel Forgiven

"Evergreen" (1997 London Records.) Produced by Echo and the Bunnymen. McCullough apparently said, when interviewed about the recording of this new album, that it was like putting on "an old pair of trousers that hadn't been worn for years, but fitted just right." This comfortable, well worn feeling is very evident on first listening to the album, it seems like these old buddies just "slotted in" where they left off, and the ease with which they create the "Bunnymen sound" is immediatly (and thankfully) apparent. Liam Gallagher sings back up on "Nothing Lasts Forever", but all I could make out was "yeah yeah yeah" buried deep under a pile of reverb ! This track however, one of the best on the album, did bear an uncanny resemblance to the other Gallagher's own "Don't Look Back in Anger", sung by brother Noel - confused - you will be ! Macca's famed cynical sense of irony is well represented in "Baseball Bill" "...you talking to me, 'cos I don't wanna know..." I hear him shouting back to the (predictable) barrage of negative criticism this album will no doubt stir up. Well what can I say ? A rather solemn offering this, it falls slightly short of the great "second coming" we were all led to believe it would be, but the compositions do refelect the passage of years (a decade since the last original album) with some dignity, and represent the group as the matured individuals they now obviously are. It's great having you back lads ! Is There An Echo In Here ? Music Central's Totally Live News May 27, 1997 Edited by Jaan Uhelszki "Because we were 15 years ahead of our time!" laughs Ian McCulloch, explaining why he, guitarist Will Sergeant, and bassist Les Pattinson - the original living members of Echo & The Bunnymen; drummer Pete De Freitas died in a 1989 auto accident - have reunited, recorded a new album, and are getting ready for their first U.S. tour in nine years. "It's not so much a reunion as the second half of a very long march," says McCulloch, flashing that famous Liverpool wit. Due in the States from London Records on July 15, this new LP, Evergreen, echoes previous Bunnymen efforts - with a notable emphasis on lush string arrangements that could prove challenging live. "Well, we've got the actual string arranger playin' keyboard strings on this tour," McCulloch explains. "He wrote mock-up versions on keyboards to start with, then went in with a 30-piece orchestra and conducted them, so he's got a real feel for what's needed." "We've also got a rhythm guitarist for the tour, because I've got really bad eyesight - but I don't wear me glasses onstage - so if I was to play guitar, I'd be lookin' at it all the time, worried about hittin' the wrong chord. And I just wanted to concentrate purely on the vocals and important things ... like smokin' cigarettes." "The set will probably be 54/100ths older material. We're going to be doin' 'People Are Strange.' It's a weird version, about one-and-a-half minutes long, but it sounds great. I don't think we've ever played it live before. A lot of people weren't even aware that we did that song in The Lost Boys movie." Well, the film's teenage vampire gang certainly looked like Echo & The Bunnymen fans... "Probably more like our American fans than our British fans," McCulloch chuckles. "But I like that film a lot, because it captured that - it wasn't Goth so much as it was beyond Goth - and I do think that Kiefer Sutherland never looked better." Speaking of famous American Echo & The Bunnymen fans, what about Courtney Love? "The only thing I remember is that I kicked her out of our dressing room when we were playin' Berkeley. I'd damaged me leg and was limpin' around the dressing room and people were laughing, and I thought they were laughin' at me, so I said, 'Hey, you, get the fuck out of my dressin' room!' And apparently she was devastated - 'cause I always thought she hated me, but apparently she loved me - that I kicked her out." "But we've made up and everything's fine. She came up on the Electrafixion [McCulloch and Sergeant's post-Bunnymen outfit] tour one time and sang 'Do It Clean' with us." As for Echo & The Bunnymen's place in today's pop firmament, McCulloch has heard it all twice (twice): "It's funny, 'cause I'm sure we've influenced Radiohead, and I feel like I'm now influenced by Radiohead, so it's almost like we're influencing ourselves a generation down." -Don ("Rabbiting On") Waller

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