The Fountain
Ocean Rain Records
2 Stars

For many people, Echo & The Bunnymen is a symbol of inventiveness, creativity and that certain something typical of dark, searching and post-punk music from the early ’80s. The band paved the way for other groups like The Cure and Siouxsie And The Banshees and spawned a surprisingly large following. With the band’s rebirth in the last decade came hope for continued creativity and something to shake up the music scene. Sadly, that was not the end result. The Fountain is the fifth album since the band got back together in the late ’90s and has little to offer in the way of truly exciting music. The tracks are good enough, but good enough isn’t going to cut it when a band has a history such as Echo & The Bunnymen.

The album begins with the rather bland “Think I Need It Too” and seldom leaves that tone, tempo, key and feel. The track, and the album as a whole, has veered away from the darker, and frankly more interesting, style that made the band famous and has found the band sitting comfortably in the middle of average pop-rock suitable for adult contemporary radio. “Forgotten Fields” sounds almost exactly like the opening song- so much so that it wouldn’t be surprising if a listener thought they’d accidentally put the first track on repeat.

“Do You Know Who I Am?” does break out of the mold so far established on The Fountain with a slightly faster tempo and a certain catchiness. However, that doesn’t mean that the song is even remotely cutting edge and may make longtime fans of Echo & The Bunnymen yearn for past days. The song sounds too much like it could be in a car commercial for it to be all that interesting. Should things get too wild, the band slides right back into the pattern of the first two tracks on “Shroud Of Turin.” Clearly the band was extremely comfortable with this approach and didn’t see any reason to switch things up a bit.

“Everlasting Neverendless” does display a bit of creativity, even if it is only in the use of English in the title. The song itself is a bit faster than some of the other tracks, at least in the introduction, but for the most part it doesn’t stand out since it uses the same vocal style, rhythm and creates the same mood as most of the other tracks on the album. “Drivetime” is one of the very few places where the band steps outside the comfortable box they’ve created for themselves. The song has a vague country music influence and is one of the only ones not in a major key. Of course the fact that “Drivetime” actually is different than the rest is a blessing and a curse. A blessing since it shows that Echo & The Bunnymen can still write a different sort of song; a curse because it only highlights the fact that they didn’t do exactly that on most of the album.

Even though Echo & The Bunnymen has been making music since 1978 and The Fountain is their eleventh studio album, it doesn’t mean that they’ve grown with that experience. Sadly, the album as a whole is uninventive, bland and cautiously upbeat lacking any grit or edge at all. Perhaps it is time for the band to admit that the fountain has run dry. — EVELYN MISKA

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