It didn’t make much/any noise at all, but I was pleased to hear this week that Echo & The Bunnymen were doing vinyl reissues of a couple of their 21st century releases – 2001’s Flowers and 2005’s Siberia – on October 1 courtesy of Demon Records, the first wax pressings of both since the limited runs when they were initially released. Hopefully this is the start of a campaign to re-release all the turn-of-the-century records on vinyl.

For a long time I’d been been someone who got by with just a copy of Songs To Learn & Sing in their collection, but I’ve since gone about getting copies of all their pre-breakup records and, were the reunion records more readily available, would have all those as well. I’m sure a lot of people dismiss the back half of their catalog as not matching the glory of the early work, but I find a lot to enjoy in their later records. McCulloch’s voice isn’t what it was, but there’s still a lot of character in his gravelly tones and he and Will Sargeant’s songwriting still turn out at least a couple of golden moments with each outing.

One of those is “Stormy Weather”, the first single from Siberia, which I’d wager is the best of those reunion records. I actually bought it on CD earlier this year since it looked like finding a copy on LP was going to cost-prohibitive. I’m still not sure if I’ll re-buy it when the reissue comes out, but will give it a number of listens before then to make up my mind. Not a hardship at all.

Here’s the official video, and a rip of their performance of it on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson in 2006.