Evergreen Demos

[In The Margins]

This is the album they should have made. Even ESH isn't that miserable.

http://thistwillightgarden.blogspot.com ... nymen.html

[black francis]

I want to be there when you come used to be called "Burt"?

[In The Margins]

I want to be there when you come used to be called "Burt"?

I guess so. It sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't know why.

[Frank The Bunny]

This is the album they should have made. Even ESH isn't that miserable.

http://thistwillightgarden.blogspot.com ... nymen.html

A correction on ESH's original title - it was Crystal Chip, not Crystal Ship

[Voodoo Billy]

I want to be there when you come used to be called "Burt"?

Considering its later title, maybe "Spurt" would have been more appropriate?

[Frank The Bunny]

The thing I've always liked about those Evergreen demos - Will's still playing Electrafixion-style guitar

[In The Margins]

The thing I've always liked about those Evergreen demos - Will's still playing Electrafixion-style guitar

Yes, they still have some kick to them. So what happened in the production process? They did their own producing. Was it London Records that pushed for the softening?

"Evergreen" sounds like it came through intact, though.

[black francis]

Considering its later title, maybe "Spurt" would have been more appropriate?

Missus behave!

[Frank The Bunny]

Yes, they still have some kick to them. So what happened in the production process? They did their own producing. Was it London Records that pushed for the softening?

"Evergreen" sounds like it came through intact, though.

Liner notes say the band produced the album. Production was actually Mac and his then-manager, Paul Toogood.

[In The Margins]

Liner notes say the band produced the album. Production was actually Mac and his then-manager, Paul Toogood.

Makes sense. Toogood was too bad.

[fat cherry]

i think toogods production is OK, it suits the songs and the band at the time but its obviously the personality clash that was doing the damage. listen to the ocean rain peel sessions and they're as rough as a dogs arse and have their charm but not the thing of beauty that is the finished 'product'. Sorry did i just call ocen rain, the greatest (second greatest) album ever made a product. sorry.

[black francis]

Can always count on Rolling Stone to stick their heads up their asses. This dude is in love with his own cleverness.

Two Stars

Suspended somewhere 'twixt heaven and hell, Echo and the Bunnymen take an oddly visceral pleasure in their spiritual limbo, evoking a vast, white, arctic expanse that's silent, unbroken and pure -- but also deadly. The band's fourth full-length LP is too often a monochromatic dirge of banal existential imagery cloaked around the mere skeleton of a musical idea. Even the livelier songs -- e.g., "Silver," "My Kingdom" -- tend to beat a formula into the ground.
The typical Echo and the Bunnymen number calls for a percussively strummed acoustic; a forsaken, tuneless chant of a vocal, steeped in cavernous echo; and a snippet of a theme, played on guitar and counterpointed by a choppy string arrangement. Sometimes the songs kick in on the choruses, but even there, guitarist Will Sergeant tends to wander around in a fog whenever he assays a solo.

The album's low point is "Thorn of Crowns," wherein singer Ian McCulloch -- besides inverting a Biblical image and rendering it incoherent -- attempts a Jim Morrison imitation that's more blustery than gripping. After four or five long minutes, there's a false ending, then McCulloch bobs up for a kind of verbal jam that's hard to imagine being delivered with a straight face: "I have decided/To wear my thorn of crowns/Inside-out/Upside-down/Back to front/All around." Well, if the crown fits....

Actually, there are some nifty choruses and nice atmospheres scattered about Ocean Rain, and "Crystal Days" and "Seven Seas" are enjoyable, welcome respites from the dark clouds of doom that spew rain and bile elsewhere. But a handful of good tunes doesn't justify an entire album, and, for a fourth record, Ocean Rain evinces too little melodic development and too much tortured soul-gazing from Echo and the Bunnymen. Silly rabbits.

[In The Margins]

Can always count on Rolling Stone to stick their heads up their asses. This dude is in love with his own cleverness.

I just looked it up -- that review was done in 1984 even though it's attached to the 2007 re-release. Don't fret, BF. It doesn't matter what this fool wrote.

Plus opinions change with retrospect over the years. I once read two reviews of Porcupine, one when it was released (bad) and the other so many years later (great). The sentiment changed like 180 degrees, to the point it was now regarded as genius and one of the best records ever. It was nice to read that second review.

[Sick4Tunz]

"The file you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable."

I'll try another time. I love the demos because the sound can be so different. I was looking forward to Will's Electrafixion-style guitar.

[DivaDiana77]

i think toogods production is OK, it suits the songs and the band at the time but its obviously the personality clash that was doing the damage. listen to the ocean rain peel sessions and they're as rough as a dogs arse and have their charm but not the thing of beauty that is the finished 'product'. Sorry did i just call ocen rain, the greatest (second greatest) album ever made a product. sorry.

I'll agree with you, but those Peel Sessions are the real unplugged, so there was a roughness to them for everyone.

I take one exception--that bassline on "Watch Out Below" was terrific--best evah. really showed what a talent Les had for writing melodic lines to fit the Bunnymen style. "Yo-Yo Man" isn't even the same song melodically on any level, just the same chords. They could have used both on Ocean Rain or used "Watch Out Below" as a B-side--of course with the vocals re-recorded because Mac was pitchy.

Ocean Rain was the last album to be produced decently well for them. All downhill from there. Jimmy Brown was much better of a song than Dancing Horses.