THE ECHOING GREEN
"The Story Of Our Lives"
A Different Drum (ADDCD1175)
Release Date: June 10, 2004

The long-delayed single for "The Story Of Our Lives" turned into a quite excellent EP by the time it finally was unleased on the world. Thedisc contains five mixes of the title track, plus remixes of three other songs from the album The Winter Of Our Discontent ("Winter," "Blind," and "Fall Awake") and two bonus tracks ("Seaside" and a cover of Wolfsheim's "The Sparrows & The Nightingales"). The standout track for us would have to be "The Story Of Our Lives [Epic]," which adds a fantastic piano-based intro and outro (played by Leiahdorus' Jason Smith) to an expanded version of the song with some interesting changes to the layering of the electronics. This is an 80's style extended mix, the way that they're supposed to be made and that I've missed. On the other side of the coin, Variant's mix of "Blind" was a tremendous disappointment. It felt more like an exercise in "how much effort can we go to in remixing the song to retain as little of what made people like the original track as possible, while just keeping enough around to make it undeniable that it's a remix of that song" than it was an actual remix of "Blind"; this is the same problem I've had with many Nine Inch Nails remixes over the last ten years, and it's disappointing to hear that on an Echoing Green release. The remaining mixes were relatively flat - not enough interesting things to make them exciting, yet not really bad mixes at the same time. "Seaside" shows a different side of The Echoing Green, having a bit more of a rock approach to it than we're used to hearing from them; guitars take the forefront on this track in a way they rarely have before for the band, and it's a good thing.

(originally reviewed by Daniel Aeschliman on November 20, 2004, expanded on May 3, 2005)