Satan's Luau

Echo and the Bunnymen - Siberia: C

I guess I consider "Lips Like Sugar" and "The Killing Moon" to be the great singular classics of E&tB, so my tastes is that of the casual music fan of the band rather than the truly hardcore. I suppose with this download I was hoping to catch lightning in the bottle, much like I did by dl-ing New Order's recent one. I liked Stormy Weather well enough, so I thought ... well, it's not on my dime, thanks to eM

Many of the other reviewers have greater context for the band than I do. They rave about the guitar playing and the accessibility of the album, and I can see all of that. This album really has a great sound about it ... some have called it a return to the roots of their sound, and that is a good observation as well.

What I can say is that despite all the things that would usually tip things towards me liking an album, the early part of this album really left me with that "... and thennn" feeling. None of the tracks felt particularly focused or tightened up, where I could as a listener wrap my mind around them ... lots of good sounding meandering, though. The latter part of the album left me that "what if" feeling, like what if they followed their instincts, this album coulda be a contendah ...

That is one thing that I thought stood out to me, lots of long winded songs early on that could have used some editing down and focusing (a bit too much north of 4 and 5 minutes) ... lots of good ideas here, too bad the execution wasn't there, to my taste anyway. "Of a Life" is an example of a shorter song that was pretty solid ... and "Make Us Blind" has the elements of old school E&tB classics but it never takes off, and as a result ... is just okay (maybe it's all the repetition of the chorus, we got the point).

Now the most frustrating song of the album is "Everything Kills You" ... not that it sucks, but that I would think that it is a great direction for the band, almost 20 years since their heyday in the college rock era, a very mature sounding song ... EEK GASP, that doesn't even use elements of their their traditional sound. It really stands out among the early songs on the album, and it's only a good but not great song.

The same can be said about the title track "Siberia", which takes a similar approach in sounding appropriately mature in design, BUT actually does make use of the old elements that make their sound great ... how I wish there were more songs like this on this album, this track was very good. "Sideways Eight" is more in the classic vein of E&tB music, could have appeared in the 80s album ... and is of an appropriate length where it doesn't get repetitive and redundant, and above all is also a very good track. I really liked the harder edged guitar driven sound of "Scissors in the Sand", which is a really well put together pop rocks song even though it is pretty epic in length. "What If We Are" is a great closer, a nice different piano-acousti ballad ... I like to call its placement the ironic "What If ... there was focus throughout the album" ... we'd be dangerously relevant, second half of the album just makes me shake my head.

I think what the album shows is that the band does not lack for ideas as much as an ability to focus, choose to follow its instincts when it has come upon a new sound, make choices as to how it wants to come across many years since its debut. I think that in many ways, listening to the early part of the album is frustrating because the focus is not there, about halfway they start to show some focus and ideas and then they finish so strong, and it makes you wish that it was consistent all the way through ... oh well.

In the final analysis, I can add "Stormy Weather" and make my favorite Echo songs a two-point-five style trio ... other than that, maybe I say YMMV if you are a hardcore E&tB fan. And if you are a fan of delay jangle guitar but with more pop focus, I guess I would point you to U2's or ... yes, we still can't believe it, New Order's WFTSC.