j o n b

When Echolyn broke through with Sony 550 Music in the mid 1990s, the major label not only released As the World but also gained the rights to their previously released material. The plan, I'm sure, was to rerelease them onto an unexpecting public once the band hit the "big time." That, of course, didn't happen. As a result, it appeared at one point that Echolyn's first two albums would languish in the Sony vaults until the end of time. A few copies of Suffocating the Bloom were sold by the band surreptitiously, as plain black CDs with no artwork or booklet. That was how I first came to hear this album. Luckilly, the band has since regained the rights to the material once held by Sony and has taken the time to remaster and rerelease it. Suffocating the Bloom was the first byproduct of that, orginally released in 1992 and restored to full glory in 2000. Suffocating shows Echolyn starting to hit their stride. While their debut was spotty, all the trademark Echolyn elements are present here, from the quick changing instrumental bits to the overlapping multipart harmonies. The first part of the album consists of mostly shorter songs. Some are uptempo rippers ("21", "Here I Am"), others more laid back and emotive ("One Voice"), while others are short instrumentals, either with a small chamber orchestra ("Reaping the Harvest", "The Sentimental Chain") or just the band ("Cactapus", a jazzy little tune). It also contains the classic "Memoirs from Between", which starts out with simple piano and acoustic piano backing shared lead vocals from Weston and Kull before breaking out into a powerful conclusion. The rest of the album is "A Suite for the Everyman", a half-hour opus that deals largely with the band's impressions of the music business gained from shopping around their first album. While it's angry and cynical in large parts, it eventually turns into not only a promise to never sell out ("Those That Want to Buy" - in the words of Tom Hyatt: "We will never put out a song that we ourselves are not totally into, regardless of current musical trends. (Remember when Kiss put out their disco hit "I Was Made For Lovin' You?")) but also a credo of how to live life in general ("Suffocating the Bloom"). As a massive work, it doesn't hold together as well as their later epic Mei, but is does work pretty well. In the end, Suffocating the Bloom is probably the best statement of what Echolyn Phase I was all about. It's a classic of 90s American prog. review by Jon Byrne — 2-17-03 —