Albums by this artist

What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (1999)

Reverberation (1990)

Echo And The Bunnymen

What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?

» BRADLEY SMITH | STAFF WRITER

Echo And The Bunnymen
What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?
London, 1999
RiYL: The Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, The Church
Sure Ian McCulloch may still be prone to run off his mouth in interviews and in concert Will Sergeant may still strike chords on the guitar that pierce the ear, but middle age has found the Bunnymen writing much more mellow material. What are You Going To Do With Your Life?, the follow-up to their 1997 comeback album Evergreen, finds the Bunnymen contemplating all the new issues that inevitably arise out of growing older.

McCulloch opens the album with the line, "If I knew now what I knew then..." It's a line characteristic of the entire album, a nostalgic yearning for days gone by. Later McCulloch entreats, "Let's go and take a starlit drive / To where the shaping of our lives / Had just begun ... when we were young." Throughout the album McCulloch is full of regret for the decisions he made, "Had too many choices/ And I missed my aim." But lurking behind this sadness is an optimistic hope for the future. McCulloch is at a crossroads, looking back at his life and forward to his future.

The album is called What are You Going To Do With Your Life? and the question is posed not only to us but to McCulloch himself. His answer is the simple, "I'm gonna be me." All of these songs are about facing the world and fighting through. As McCulloch declares in "Get In The Car," "Nothing's gonna get me down." And the album ends with the appropriate refrain, "Time is on our side."

Unlike a lot of rock groups, Echo and The Bunnymen have gotten better with age. McCulloch's voice sounds just as good now, if not better than it did on those early Bunnymen albums. And his lyric writing has improved immeasurably. Sergeant has honed his guitar technique and gives a near perfect performance on this album. My only complaint -- and this is a small, infinitesimal gripe -- is that there needs to be one or two songs that really just rock out on the album. But even without those songs, this is a damn fine album.

BRADLEY SMITH |