PRE-ORDER/SAVE
‘WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?' SEPTEMBER 25, 2024: 25 years since its first release, London Records are set to release Echo & The Bunnymen’s album ‘What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?’ on vinyl for the very first time on November 29th, both on crystal clear vinyl and on limited edition rust orange vinyl. Fully remastered, the 1999 album will also be reissued on an expansive 34-track double CD edition featuring B-sides, alternative takes and live versions of Bunnymen classics and tracks from the album.
‘What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?’ is the eighth studio album by the Liverpool post-punk legends and the follow-up to their triumphant 1997 comeback album ‘Evergreen’, which saw original Bunnymen members Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant and Les Pattison reunite in the studio for the first time in almost a decade.
Continuing the trajectory set with ‘Evergreen’, the songs from ‘What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?’ are both lyrically introspective and straightforward, bolstered by expansive, melodic arrangements, with strings performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra.
Speaking in 1999 about the album’s organic approach McCulloch states: “After ‘Evergreen’ I was writing all this kind of stuff, and I thought, we're just going to go in there, and half of it will be very song-orientated, and the other will be ‘Heaven Up Here.’”
“The title ‘What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?’ is more of an eternal question than where do we come from? It's where the sod are we going to go? It dawned on me that I can write these words that don't go above people's heads. It wasn't like ‘I'm going to simplify lyrics,’ it's just I felt confident of who I am.”
“My solo period was kind of learning that I don't write abstract lyrics very well and never really did. It's still, for me, the Leonard Cohens and the John Lennon’s… It's like, how much simpler can you get than that? But it's one of the most poetic things I've ever heard in a song, because it resonates, and you know exactly what he's on about.”
The album features a final turn on bass on “Fools Like Us” from Les Pattison, who would leave the band in 1998, and the inspired choice of Fun Lovin’ Criminals, who provide horns on “Get in the Car” and “When It All Blows Over”.
‘What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?’ featured two singles, “Get in The Car” and fan favourite “Rust’”, which was an NME Single Of The Week and the band’s final UK Top 40 hit.
The band would tour extensively in 1999 in support of the album, and the expanded 2CD edition features previously unreleased live tracks from shows of the time including The Improv Theatre in London (recorded for Radio One’s John Peel Show) and Cream in Liverpool, including Bunnymen classics ‘The Killing Moon’, ‘Lips Like Sugar’, ‘Back Of Love’ and ‘The Cutter’.
Formed in Liverpool in 1978, Echo & The Bunnymen have been a seminal force in the indie rock world for over four decades, garnering millions of obsessive music fans worldwide while influencing countless bands, from the Flaming Lips to Coldplay to Pavement.
Critical praise for ‘What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?’:
“What Are You Going to Do With Your Life? feels of a piece with their earlier albums, not only sonically, but in terms of quality. Clocking in at just 38 minutes, the record is concise and dense with detail, finding the precise tone between the floating grandeur of early Echo and the timeless romanticism of classic torch songs.”
AllMusic
“When McCulloch brings it all back home with the melancholy piano tune, "History Chimes," we realise why we liked Echo in the first place: they wrote, and continue to write, good songs.”
Pitchfork |
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