Ian McCulloch wanted to do something other than make a new Bunnymen album. Really, he did. He even went so far as to part company with the other Bunnies in an effort to let all three of them stretch their legs out and move in separate directions, just to let them get a taste of extra-Bunnymen flavors. Then he sat down and started writing, and three songs into it, he realized he wasn't making the best use of his freedom, and was still writing Bunnymen songs. The Fountain might have just been meant to be.

Fatalism or writer's block, it all boils down to the same thing, Echo and the Bunnymen are back with their first album in four years with The Fountain, and true to its meant-to-be origins, it sounds, well, like a new Bunnymen album. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- unless you're still unrealistically pinning your hopes on it sounding like an old Bunnymen album -- but it does make it a little too tempting to treat it like we've treated most of the band's material in recent years: Approach it with mild interest, receive it with mild warmth and cherish it only if you're a Bunnymen devotee. You know the drill.

For all the time between The Fountain and its predecessor, 2005's Siberia (review) (Cooking Vinyl), the two are indeed cut from the same cloth, songwriting-wise, if The Fountain trades some of the bedroom jangle for sturdier production that pumps up the rhythm section, but the basic approach is the same: It's the same grown-up pop of the band's later years without any of the sourpuss fun of its goth-era roots. "Forgotten Fields" and "The Fountain," like most of the album, find the band juggling its gloomy psychedelic past with a reverence for Britpop song-smithing, while "Shroud of Turin" lets some of the jangle of Siberia past the doorman.

Echo and the Bunnymen are still a formidable songwriting team, as McCulloch and Will Sergeant are masters of the pop form by now, but The Fountain is still too much business-as-usual for the band. Just like McCulloch really, really wanted to branch out from Bunnymen songwriting for a change, listeners are left really, really wanting to like this more than the rest of the band's reunion-era albums. Looks like everyone failed on this attempt.