It might have been better for Echo and the Bunnymen’s legacy if after the band’s climactic fourth album, 1984’s Ocean Rain, the band retired the Bunnymen moniker. The group’s initial four-album cycle detailed a Dante-ish journey from the inferno to paradise, and after Ocean Rain’s denouement, the group would never again tap the nervy, punky edge that made them so enigmatic. They’d go on to record more great albums, including 1987’s chart-climbing self-titled disc, but they would always be compared unfavorably to past accomplishments they themselves stopped trying to replicate long ago.
The band’s newest album, The Fountain, will likely meet the same fate as every other Bunnymen album since the group’s mid-’90s reunion. Purists will scoff at it and dismiss it as another lifeless grab for the housewives and soccer moms market. That Coldplay lightning-rod Chris Martin guests on the album’s title track will only further alienate the Bunnymen's punk contingent.
To be sure, this is not another Heaven Up Here. Taken for the lightweight guitar-pop album that it is, though, The Fountain is mostly excellent, and easily the most tuneful record the band’s cut since Echo and the Bunnymen. “Think I Need It Too” and, particularly, “Life of 1000 Crimes” are giddy with hooks, and though they won’t help the band recapture their old prestige, they’ll at least make excellent bonus tracks to some future re-release of Songs to Learn and Singsurprises in waiting for a potential new crop of Bunnymen listeners more willing to give the band’s easygoing later material a fair shake.
