Echo and the Bunnymen

The Fountain, Echo and the Bunnymen's newest release, is a great record, make no mistake about it. When singer Ian McCulloch says of the record "The best one we've made, apart from Ocean Rain.", he might not be too far off in ranking their newest effort just behind their classic 1984 masterpiece.

The band has been one of the most successful Alternative bands to come out of England from their inception in 1978 to their breakup ten years later, but since their reformation, the band has put out a consistent body of work starting with Evergreen in 1997, What Are You Going To Do With Your Life (1999), Flowers (2001), Siberia (2005), and continuing with The Fountain (2009).

There are both positives and negatives that set The Fountain apart from the other "Reformation Era" records. The songs are the strongest than on any other record they've released in the last 12 years. The melodies soar, the lyrics dream, and the guitars beg you to take the journey with them.

From the opening track, and first single, "I Think I Need It Too", you are immediately pulled right into a record that is one hit after another. Right out of the gate, "Forgotten Fields", "Do You Know Who I Am", and "Shroud Of Turin" all follow the opening track and come at you in one of the best 1-2-3-4 punches to start a record in a long time.

But for all of the perfection in the songwriting, of the energy of the performances, and to the cleverness of the lyrics, it is all nearly lost on the inexcusable botch job to the mastering of the record.

Where all of the "Reformed Era" records have a warm and inviting sound that is so fitting of Echo and the Bunnymen, The Fountain has fallen into a modern day trap of sounding as if it were made for the iPod rather than the hi-fi.

It's a shame that a band that has always strove to make timeless and classic records, and they've certainly done that with The Fountain, has had a record compromised in sound quality to simply follow the fad of the day. Classic records from the '60s and '70s weren't mastered for transistor radios, so it's a shame to hear The Fountain mastered for mp3 players.

The songs on The Fountain (and it is all about the songs after all) are hardly hampered by the sound quality, and will certainly make many top 10 lists at the end of the year.