Customer Reviews

Flowers

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I only bought this beacause it was cheap and didn't expect much. I rate CDs on how much I play them and I havn't stopped playing this one yet. A lot of Cds last a week or so. It's been 2 months since I bought this. At first listen it seems pretty ordinary but it sneaks up on you and I found myself singing the tunes while I was walking around the house. I havn't done that for years. For me this makes Flowers one of the best CDs I've had in many years.

Flowers the third and without doubt best installment of the glorious return of Echo & The Bunnymen, is a stroll through the psycedelic garden that is the minds eye of messers Will Sergeant and Ian McCulloch. The boys are on familiar ground with a nod to the doors Through the opening track King of Kings and a wink to The Velvet Underground with Buried Alive all the classic hallmarks that make the Bunnymen tick are here. Mac really Flexes his vocal muscels with the gorgeous title track Flowers while Will has a ball with An Eternity Turns, finishing with the custumery haunting ballad in this case Burn With Me. Here is what all Bunnyheads have been waiting for the big sister to Ocean Rain, so if you want to tell someone you love them say it with flowers.

The rare and underappreciated gift of Echo and the Bunnymen is their ability to conjure mind movies. You might not see ghost bicycles plying a silver dome-skied heaven like I do, but if you listen, you'll see something.

This new work, in particular, shimmers with aesthetic intensity. Even when you're tempted to write off a line here or there as trite or cliched, Ian McCulloch's resonant voice saves it. Will Sergeant's guitar bundles an immense array of melodic sound around the band's strong rhythms.

Everything is organically unified. The vocals and the guitar at times peer through cautious fingers into vaulting spanses of cosmic space that music has failed to probe for years or maybe forever. Songs like "SuperMellowMan" are as melodic as they are uncharted.

The themes, as usual, insinuate themselves onto an emotional plain dominated by the weight of mortality, especially on "Buried Alive," the spacey ballad "Burn for Me," and the title track.

The celebration of life is present, too, on energetic but melodic "Everybody Knows" and "Life Goes On," both of bear ties to earlier works.

This is a stunning album that deserves far more attention than it is likely ever to get. That in itself makes it not only significant, but important.

If you care to make a difference in a wasteland culture and an industry hell-bent for mindless, craftless idiocy, get this album.

And don't download it; buy it.

Ian McCulloch has made fun of Les Pattinson's bass playing. He doesn't understand how important it was to the sound the band achieved from 1980-1985. Listen to those albums, and you will hear that the bass lines are very distinctive signatures on almost every song -- a key part of an amazing recipe. They were largely gone on the 1987 album, and they're entirely gone here. Without them, this is just a good pop band with good songs. Who needs them?

Many old Echo fans bemoaned the "soft" sound of the last album, "What are you gonna do...". I thought it was brilliant. The elder statesbunnymen were getting older and wiser. These were the sounds of ocean rain pattering on a roof that had seen lot of changes since the crystal days of yesteryear. They invited us to "get in the car" and go for a ride; with "Flowers", they take us on a trip into space, and what a trip it is... The title track treats us to a spooky and hooky theremin riff. While it's not faster than a speeding bullet, nor able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, "SuperMellowMan" has Supermac revealing his vulnerable side ("...will you talk me through till dawn, never felt so lost and lonely") while in the energetic "It's Alright", he makes it clear that he ain't no pushover ("I need more not less, and don't ever tell me when to stop"). My personal fave track is "Buried Alive". I don't know a killing moon from a Delvaux moon, but the way Mac croons about how "childhood's end came too soon" communicates something that few songs nowadays do- and the guitar lick that drones in the background reminds me of how Bowie's "Heroes" might have sounded in another lifetime. Throughout, Will shreds, jangles, smolders, and combusts on the guitars, Mac does his thing on the mic, and melodies ring sweet but not saccharine. The album closes with the words "one night, your sea will melt into my ocean" ("Burn for Me"). Water. Flowers. Hearts. Flames...

I have been a fan of Echo & The Bunnymen since around 1985. Once I heard them, I had to get my hands on everything they had made previously, and I continue to buy what the band releases.

I thought they had reached their peak with "Evergreen" in 1997, but "Flowers" -- albeit more mellow than other releases -- is musically and lyrically superior to most of the band's releases. Doubtful they'll top the success of their self-titled album in the late 80's (or "Ocean Rain" for that matter) but it doesn't matter. The band has a made an album that reaches across genres to (hopefully) give the band a wider audience. It is such a good album. Fans of any of their old stuff will be instantly amazed at this release.

Let's hope they get the promo they deserve in the States.

I suggest buying a few copies of this--give them to your friends.

Many avid fans bemoaned the softer, more mature sound found on the first three discs released in the second half of their career ("Evergreen" "What Are You Going to Do" and "Flowers"), but this is really just a thinly veiled attempt at complaining that nothing sounds like the masterpiece "Porcupine" (which, by the way, everyone should own)! Moaning aside, on this release, it's the same old Echo that we all know and love, with the same accoustic furnishings that skyrocketed "The Killing Moon" into permanent pop cult status. This release contains the same kind of "sound" (and every track is excellent!),and may also remind one of Ian McCulloch's first solo LP ("Candleland") minus the electronic trimmings. If you liked "Evergreen," this one's even much better!!! Simply brilliant!

Echo and the Bunnymen put out some of the best albums of the 80s. Electrafixion, the Will and Mac project of the early 90s was amazing. But the reunion albums left me a little cold. Neither Evergreen or WAYGTDWYL were terrible, but just a little too occasionally schmaltzy for me to give them too many listens. Then, here comes Flowers. It's a rager! Will's strange guitar sounds and trippy song structures, Mac's beautiful screwdriver and cigarettes voice...the reunion has peaked!!! This album is easily in my top 10 for the year. Let's hope they can keep pulling off this sort of amazing music in the future. This is one of the few 80s "reunion" bands worth hearing again.

I must admit I am a little surprised to see some negative reviews here for this record. I am of the camp that thinks (or thought, anyway) that Echo lost it after Ocean Rain. Well this album proved me very wrong.

Only a couple are so-so tracks but all the rest are gems. There are numerous memorable hooks with excellent singing/playing and production. It just keeps growing with each listen.

Trust me. Get it.

Trippy guitar! Psychedelic sounding songs (rather than mere pop songs) - this is the Echo & the Bunnymen we know and love. It took awhile for these Flowers to grow on me - in fact, I discovered the greatness of the songs via the Live in Liverpool album, where they play several excellent tracks from this album.
Lotsa Eastern-influenced hooks on this one, and that makes the big difference between this and Evergreen the other late-period stuff. It may take awhile to grow on ya, but once it does, you'll really dig this album, if you love Echo & the Bunnymen.