Siberia
Label: Cooking Vinyl
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Siberia
Very little in Echo & the Bunnymen’s 26-year oeuvre exists to suggest a dreamy glance upward; they grandfathered the mop-top mope, after all. But the optimism present on this latest release isn’t wholly out of form either. When Ian McCulloch howls the closing notes of “Stormy Weather,” blithely asking, “How’s my stormy weather now?” it’s both a kiss and a kiss-off to the past. Hugh Jones is present on the production boards this time around for the first time since Heaven Up Here as is the lazy tendency to rattle couplets too close to one another. But Siberia is also an anthemic masterpiece, filled to the half-full line with sentimental majesty that can almost be described as that elusive 13th step. While the rest of the music world mines the cocaine-and-coffee-table synthesizers of the new ’80s, McCulloch and Will Sergeant have turned up a wholly different kind of rock: one that grows up, looks up and lives forever.
This article appears in Sep 21-27, 2005.