The Very Best Of Echo & The Bunnymen: More Songs To Learn And Sing [CD]

The Bunnymen are probably due a career retrospective beyond the box-set 'Crystal Days' - the original 'Songs to Learn & Sing' ending in 1985 and the 1997-compilation 'Ballyhoo' a bit of a rush to cash in on the Bunnymen's return - album tracks like 'The Disease', 'Over the Wall' & 'All That Jazz' best suited to their source albums. Though this compilation leaves off 'The Puppet', as did 'Ballyhoo' and the reissue of 'Crocodiles'...what's wrong with this song????? Other than 'The Puppet', all of the original 'Songs...' is here and all predictably fantastic: 'Rescue', 'Do It Clean', 'A Promise', 'The Back of Love', 'The Cutter' (later sampled by Ultramarine), 'Never Stop' (rivals Haircut 100 and 'Oblivious' by Aztec Camera), 'The Killing Moon' (as featured in 'Donnie Darko'), 'Silver', the sublime 'Seven Seas' & the charming 'Bring on the Dancing Horses.' It's all perfect stuff and worth buying for this great sequence of classic singles, gripes about the absenc of 'The Pictures on My Wall' apart!!!

The band then had problems - Pete De Freitas going AWOL and their 5th album being a damp squib - though two of the better tracks are here, 'The Game' and 'Lips Like Sugar'('Bedbugs & Ballyhoo' probably should have made it too, as should 'Angels & Devils' and 'Read It In Books'...). The crowd-pleasing element is found with their cover of The Doors' 'People are Strange' which featured in Brat Pack Vamp-B-movie 'The Lost Boys.' Ian McCulloch then jumped ship and Pete De Freitas was tragically killed in an motorycle collision with a car. A version of the Bunnymen carried on with members of St Vitus Dance, but they have now been written out of history. The Bunnymen could never be the same again without De Freitas - though returning in 1997 the three remaining members delivered a return to form with the 'Evergreen' LP. The best moment is 'Nothing Lasts Forever', which features Liam Gallagher on backing vocals and is probably how the 5th LP should have sounded. 'I Want to Be There...' & 'Don't Let It Get You Down' were OK, but could have been on the so-so Electrafixion album. The Bunnymen did return to form, but paled a bit when contrasted to Radiohead or Verve albums released in 1997...

The England Utd-single and the exit of Les Pattinson didn't bode well and it's easy to see why former peer Julian Cope calls them Chicken in a Bunnymen. Only 'Rust' appears from 'What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?', an album that lacked Will Sergeant's guitar-adventures and sounded like a succesor to Mac's 'Candleland' LP. The band were dropped by London soon after, McCulloch making solo albums that weren't far enough away from the Bunnymen, collaborating with the godawful Fun Lovin'Criminals & accepting the patronage of 'Ocean Rain'-tribute act, Coldplay (OK, the 'Play have heard another album too, I'm being unfair. It's called 'The Unforgettable Fire'!). 2001's 'Flowers' was probably their best album since 'Ocean Rain', definitely up there with 'Porcupine' - 'It's Alright' stems from that and suggests that Cooking Vinyl album should be sought out. The same holds true of recent album 'Siberia', which nodded heavily in the direction of 1981's 'Heaven Up Here', single 'Stormy Weather' the not best representation of that album since it sounds like Mac's solo stuff and/or the Lightning Seeds.

As a primer in the Bunnymen's career it works well, despite the abscence of 'The Puppet'!!!! It ticks most boxes, despite having a few so-so moments - following this I'd proceed to the first four albums (particularly 'Crocodiles' & 'Ocean Rain') and the most recent two. There are many great Bunnysongs not here - 'King of Kings', 'Altamont', 'Sister Pain' (OK, I'm cheating!), 'Ocean Rain' (well the whole of side 2), 'Angels & Devils', 'Bedbugs & Ballyhoo', 'Clay', 'Show of Strength', 'Over the Wall', 'With a Hip', 'Pictures on My Wall', 'Stars are Stars', 'Villiers Terrace'...so it's certainly far from everything!!! The DVD-set looks to be the ideal one for fans to go with, I'll certainly pick that up, if only for the classic 'Killing Moon'-promo...

Does the world need another Echo & The Bunnymen compilation? I mean, really? For a band whose reputation stands and falls with four albums (and a couple of additional singles) released from 1980 to 1984, and who released very few b-sides which weren't re-arrangements or working versions of album tracks, the compilation market is a claustrophobic one - the original (and still best) Songs to Learn and Sing, Bedbugs and Ballyhoo, the cheap Seven Seas of last year, Live in Liverpool (which is well worth a listen and does manage to integrate the old and new material) and the four disc warts-and-all Crystal Days.

With all this, it's difficut to find a non-financial rationale for this release. It is not a comprehensive collection of all the singles (Pictures on My Wall, the Puppet, Silver and anything from the Shine So Hard ep are absent, to say nothing of the McCulloch-less group in the early 1990s) and one song is not a single. The non-chronological tracklisting is perverse and the songs do not sit well with one another. If the point is to paint the post-reform output in the same light as the classic early work it fails. The reliance upon singles means we get three tracks from the fine Evergreen and only one from the fantastic Heaven Up Here and excludes such works of genius as Over the Wall. Again, if the point is to show consistency of output over 25 years, why have a photo of the original quartet of McCulloch, Sergeant, Pattison and de Freitas on the cover? All this does is demean the current lineup.

I can't see who will buy this (without the dvd which does have some classic videos on it). Save for Hang on to a Dream, there is nothing which Bunnymen afficionados will not have already. For those not yet familiar with this group, purchase the excellently-packaged and re-mastered original albums Ocean Rain, Heaven Up Here, Crocodiles and Porcupine (in that order) and enjoy.

There seem a few reviews going on at some length about cashing in by the record companies and the validity of this - and the band's other compilations.

As a music buying teenager of the '80s, The Bunnymen largely passed me by and it's only now, looking back and getting music online that I missed then that I thought "that'd be nice".

Which it is and is basically all I wanted. The Best of Echo & the Bunnymen. The Killing Moon (my favourite), The Cutter etc. plus 15 more + 3 bonus tracks and 8 promo videos on the DVD. True, I'll not explore further into the deep recesses of their repertoire by buying this, but, that was never my intention.

The glossy card-bound twin disc (CD + DVD) package is attractively presented and for my intents and purposes, fits the bill very nicely!