Echo & The Bunnymen - Evergreen - New 2CD

Format: New 2CD Label: London Recordings Cat. No. LMS5521767 Barcode: 5060555217679 Released: 09/12/2022

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Echo and The Bunnymen’s second coming, London Records revisit the band’s triumphant album Evergreen. Originally released in 1997, Evergreen marked a critical and commercial renaissance for the band after more than half a decade’s hiatus; an album that rightfully returned them to the Top 10 that sported three UK hits including the seminal ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’.

Ten years since they last graced the Top Ten Album Chart, Evergreen returned them there in July 1997. The Bunnymen had proved themselves not only deserving of a second wind but effortlessly welcomed by the musical landscape of the late-90s. Arriving in the season of Oasis’s Be Here Now and The Verve’s Urban Hymns, Evergreen was both of and beyond its time. At the time, McCulloch proudly spoke of the album as the best he’d believed they’d ever made. Through the sepia lens of hindsight, today he understates its value as containing “at least three great songs, which is three more than most bands have in their entire catalogue.” By name, the ballads ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’, ‘Forgiven’ and ‘Just A Touch Away’. Beyond McCulloch’s holy trinity, Evergreen was just as notable for its snake-charming title track and the similarly serpentine ‘Empire State Halo’, both, like the best Bunnymen songs of yore, reaching our ears somewhere from Norris Green via Marrakesh. Elsewhere the Mersey shuffle of singles ‘Don’t Let it Get You Down’ and ‘I Want To Be There (When You Come)’ sees the brighter side of the band, as open and as relevant as their contemporaries past and present. “Someone asked me the other day why I reunited the Bunnymen,” McCulloch commented that summer. “Well, I haven’t. I’ve re-ignited the Bunnymen. Having said that, they never stopped glowing somewhere in my heart.” That glow made music, Evergreen still blinds.