Siberia

Echo & the Bunnymen:
Siberia

[Cooking Vinyl; 2005]
Rating: 6.7
When Echo & the Bunnymen initially reunited in 1997, they seemed to make a concerted effort to bring their old, moody post-punk sound up to date with what was happening at the time. That year's Evergreen was a pretty decent record, but one that took a lot of cues from the Verve, Oasis, and Britpop's other masters of the big ballad. The 1999 follow-up What Are You Going to Do With Your Life? was Bunnymen lite, a band lost in the treacle of middle age, but since then they've really been striving to turn back the clock, if not all the way to the glory days of Porcupine and Heaven Up Here, then at least to "Bring on the Dancing Horses". 2001's Flowers sounded like a tamer sequel to Ocean Rain, and Siberia, the fourth studio installment from the reconvened band, sounds, well, like an even tamer sequel.

The band is now down to a sunglasses-in-the-dark duo of Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant with hired guns to stand in for Les Pattinson and the late Pete de Freitas. Simon Finley and Peter Wilkinson do a dead-on impression of their forebears in concert, but these McCulloch/Sergeant compositions-- unlike the bulk of Echo's early work-- don't offer the rhythm section much to do. Wilkinson does throw down a pumping, Pattinson-style bass line on "Parthenon Drive", but that's the only real flash of rhythmic brilliance we're offered. It's no coincidence that it's also the most impressive song on the album-- the great bass part gives Sergeant his most interesting jumping-off point for his squirming lead guitar lines.

Much more typical is "All Because of You Days", a mid-tempo slice of brood-rock slathered in Sergeant's pyrotechnics, and McCulloch's baritone, which he uses in a far more hushed fashion these days than he used to when he was wailing away on "Rescue" and "The Cutter". If McCulloch now sounds conspicuously like someone's dad it's probably because he is, and even if when dipping back into the well of dark psych, the age and weariness displayed on What Are You Going to Do...

 is still very much in evidence.

In fact, for all the noisemaking that goes on in between, the album is bookended by a pair of songs that look back only lyrically, preferring a gentler musical approach. Opener "Stormy Weather" is a jangling piece of pop that largely eschews the guitar squalls suggested by its title, while closer "What If We Are" is the big piano ballad. "Maybe I'm not the boy/ Maybe I'm not the man/ But what if I am/ What if I am/ Then it's love, yes it's love/ Like it should be..." it goes on like that, and it's frankly one of the most boring songs the band has ever done, too stuck in the middle of the road to have the world-moving impact it seems to aspire to.

If nothing else, Siberia proves McCulloch and Sergeant still have their songwriting craft in good working order, but it's hard to recommend an album on strength of craft alone-- it has to have a little verve, and unfortunately it's lacking. In the end, the band's retreat to the 80s falters because they can't find their way back.
- Joe Tangari, September 23, 2005