Echo & The Bunnymen’s eighth studio album, What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? on vinyl for the very first time

Twenty-five years since its first release, London Records are set to reissue Echo & The Bunnymen’s eighth studio album, What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?, on vinyl.

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 video for the album’s lead single Rust has been newly restored in HD. Watch below:

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.

Echo & The Bunnymen’s eighth studio album, What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? on vinyl
Picture credit: Kevin Westerberg

Turning Me To Rust

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.”

What Are You Going To Do With Your Life

Expansive Edition

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.

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.

Fully remastered, the 1999 album is out on 29 November, both on crystal clear vinyl and on limited edition rust orange vinyl. It 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.

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
What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?
Rust
Get In The Car
Baby Rain
History Chimes
Lost On You
Morning Sun
When It All Blows Over
Fools Like Us
The Fish Hook Girl *
See The Horizon *
Sense Of A Life **
Beyond The Green **
The Wood +
Rust (Video Edit)
Fools Like Us (Alternate Extended Mix) +
Baby Rain (Alternative Mix 1) +
History Chimes (Piano and Guitar Version) +

Disc 2
What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (Radio Edit) +
Get In The Car (Radio Edit) ++
Top Of The World (Band Version) +
Rust (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
Fools Like Us (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
Baby Rain (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999) +
What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (Live At The Improv Theatre, 1999)+
All That Jazz (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
Back Of Love (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
People Are Strange (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
The Cutter (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
Lips Like Sugar (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
Over The Wall (Live At Cream, Liverpool, 1997) +
Do It Clean Medley (Live At Cream, 1997) +
The Killing Moon (Live At Cream, 1997) +
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 to pre-order here

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