Echo & The Bunnymen reissue What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?

London Records to release Echo & The Bunnymen’s eighth studio album What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? on vinyl LP for the very first time to celebrate 25th anniversary.

Fully remastered, the 1999 album will be available on both crystal clear vinyl and on limited edition rust orange vinyl. An expansive 34-track double CD edition featuring B-sides, alternative takes and live versions of Bunnymen classics and tracks from the album will also be reissued.

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 on 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.

Organic Approach

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 Lennons… 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.”

Seminal Force

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.

Tracklistings

LP

A1 What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?
A2 Rust
A3 Get In The Car
A4 Baby Rain

B1 History Chimes
B2 Lost On You
B3 Morning Sun
B4 When It All Blows Over
B5 Fools Like Us

2CD

Disc 1
A1 What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?
A2 Rust
A3 Get In The Car
A4 Baby Rain
A5 History Chimes
A6 Lost On You
A7 Morning Sun
A8 When It All Blows Over
A9 Fools Like Us
A10 The Fish Hook Girl *
A11 See The Horizon *
A12 Sense Of A Life **
A13 Beyond The Green **
A14 The Wood +
A15 Rust (Video Edit)
A16 Fools Like Us (Alternate Extended Mix) +
A17 Baby Rain (Alternative Mix 1) +
A18 History Chimes (Piano and Guitar Version) +

Disc 2
B1 What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (Radio Edit) +
B2 Get In The Car (Radio Edit) ++
B3 Top Of The World (Band Version) +
B4 Rust (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
B5 Fools Like Us (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
B6 Baby Rain (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
B7 What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999)+
B8 All That Jazz (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
B9 Back Of Love (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
B10 People Are Strange (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
B11 The Cutter (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
B12 Lips Like Sugar (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
B13 Over The Wall (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
B14 Do It Clean Medley (Live At Cream, 1997) +
B15 The Killing Moon (Live At Cream, 1997) +
B16 Rust (BBC Radio 1 – Live Lounge, 1999)

* From Rust CD Single 1
** From Rust CD SIngle 2
+ previously unreleased
++ from Get in The Car CD Single

Available 29 November, pre-order here