This is a solid compilation for those who want to jump into Pseudo Echo but not knowing their music or for those who enjoyed their music before (like myself who owned the cassette tapes that are unlistenable today because they are so warped, so an upgrade was very much needed). While not a best album, you do get many of the band’s best songs on this album.Pseudo Echo’s “Ultimate” is definitely recommended!
Click here to purchase Pseudo Echo – “Ultimate” on Amazon
BAND: Pseudo Echo
ALBUM: Ultimate
DURATION: 26 Songs (2 Hours, 4 Minutes)
RELEASE DATE: April 13, 2022
DISC 1:
CD1 01 Funky Town
CD1 02 Listening
CD1 03 Send Me An Angel
CD1 04 A Beat For You
CD1 05 Don’t Go
CD1 06 Let’s Stick Together
CD1 07 Living In A Dream
CD1 08 Nutbush City Limits
CD1 09 Love An Adventure
CD1 10 Stranger In Me
CD1 11 Dancing Until Midnight
CD1 12 Suddenly Silently
CD1 13 Destination Unknown
CD1 14 Destiny
CD1 15 Over Tomorrow
CD1 16 His Eyes
CD1 17 All Of The Above
CD1 18 Autumnal Park
DISC 2:
CD2 01 Funky Town (Extended Version)
CD2 02 Listening (Extended Version)
CD2 03 Living In A Dream (Extended Version)
CD2 04 A Beat For You (Extended Version)
CD2 05 Don’t Go (Extended Version)
CD2 06 Love And Adventure (Extended Version)
CD2 07 Stranger In Me (Extended Version)
CD2 08 Destination Unknown (Extended Version)
If there were three Australian bands that I have listened to a lot during my teenage to young adult life, they would be INXS, Midnight Oil and Pseudo Echo.
As a surfer, I discovered the new wave band, Pseudo Echo through the film “North Shore”, but there is no doubt the group is best known for their cover of the 1980 song “Funkytown” originally sung by disco act, Lipps Inc. The Pseudo Echo version was #1 on the Australia, New Zealand and Canadian music charts, while taking no. 8 in the UK Charts and no. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 Charts.
Pseudo Echo originally featured vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Brian Canham, Pierre Pierre on bass, keyboards and bass guitar and Tony Lugton on keyboards. Band members also included Anthony Arigro on drums, James Leigh would replace Lugton on keyboards and Vince Leigh would later replace Arigro on drums.
Influenced by Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Ultravox, Pseudo Echo debuted as a New Romantic/New Wave synth pop group as evident with the songs in their debut album “Autumnal Park” from 1984 and then became a synth pop/rock band with their second album “Love an Adventure” and then an ’80s rock band with their third and final album “Race” in 1988, in which the band disbanded not long after tensions started to surface among band members.
While the band would reunite in 1998 to do some touring and Canham discovered the extra songs created for their debut album “Autumnal Park, which have been shelved, forgotten and rediscovered and released as “The 301 Demo Sessions” in 2005.
The band would go through member changes with Canham being the original member left and in 2014, the band would take on two successful crowdfunding campaigns that would allow them to self-produce their fifth studio album, “Ultraviolet”. While the second album would be a live recording at the Viper Room in Hollywood and release their live album “Live at the Viper Room” in 2015.
The band has released a few singles, an acoustic album titled “Acoustica” in 2020 and their latest seventh studio album, “After Party”.
While in June 2021, Canham would find his tape masters of his solo work recorded in 1990, with the label holding the masters and Canham trying to get access to it, fortunately he and his wife while doing some cleaning, found a box full of recordings on tape and wanting to make sure it was preserved, Canham had it digitized and now those songs have been released under the Pseudo Echo name as “1990: The Lost Album Demos”.
Which leads us to 2022 with the release of “Ultimate”.
The compilation album is not a greatest hits but is more of a collection of songs from “Autumnal Park”, “Love an Adventure”, “Race”, “Ultraviolet”, “1990: The Lost Album Demos”, “After Party” and unreleased and released songs. Many of the songs from first two albums “Autumnal Park” and “Love an Adventure”.
So, you’ll get a lot of the popular hits such as “Listening”, “A Beat for You”, “Dancing Until Midnight”, “Stranger in Me”, “Don’t Go”, “Love an Adventure”, “Living a Dream” and “Funky Town”.
The compilation includes a cover of the Australian band, Real Life’s 1983 hit song, “Send Me an Angel” and a cover of Wilbert Harrison’s 1962 hit song “Let’s Stick Together” (which was also covered by Bryan Ferry in 1976).
In addition, the compilation also includes their 2017 single “Nutbush City Limits”, a cover of the popular 1973 song by Ike & Tina Turner.
While the second disc would include eight extended versions of their popular singles from 1983-1986.
If there was one track that I was surprised to not see in this compilation album is their song “Try”, but I would imagine that because several songs from “Love an Adventure” were already included on the compilation, in order to include other songs from other albums, “Try” was omitted.
While I am sure there are fans who loved the band’s third album “Race” and would have loved more singles from that album included, personally, I felt that Pseudo Echo’s foray into hard rock music, was a bad decision and based on the member’s panicking at the time and as it’s been already publicized, band members went against Canham and submitted their songs to the label for the third album without him knowing.
While I am glad that the band are in much better place now, more mature than their brash young years, I totally understand the desperation because many new romantic or new wave bands in general did not last that long because there was a shift of music style. But some bands did. And while I’m not saying Pseudo Echo could have went the Depeche Mode and The Cure direction, or even a more alternative rock such such as their fellow Australian band contemporaries such as Midnight Oil and INXS stayed consistent with, or even the post-Britpop style of music of bands going from rock to incorporating a lot of electronic sounds (which Blur and Radiohead became famous for), the band had an image and a musical style that worked.
In fact, I think for Australian artists or bands, one of the challenges is not becoming “one hit wonders” and personally, I dislike the term because while some may want to believe the scale is to measure yourself around what is popular in America and what makes it into the Billboard Hot 100, the truth for many of us who were into new romantic, new wave, alternative rock music, etc., many of us music fans who didn’t listen to commercial American music didn’t care about that.
Midnight Oil had one hit song in the US, Blur had one hit song in the US, Bjork had only one song in the Billboard Hot 100, but did that make them irrelevant? Of course not.
Pseudo Echo no doubt enjoyed the success of “Funky Town”, but that was not even close to being my favorite song from the band. To me, I was glad that they had a song that became commercially popular, but I couldn’t care less.
For me, growing up, I had more faith in the once legendary Los Angeles rock station KROQ 106.7 (who played music that other radio stations wouldn’t play, ie. new wave, alternative rock, etc.) or even the UK or Aria Charts.
While many went crazy for Pseudo Echo’s “Funky Town”, I was more stoked for Pseudo Echo for making the KROQ 106.7 “Top 100 songs for 1987” with “Living in a Dream” at No. 65 (considering the popularity of The Cure, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Cure, INXS, XTC, New Order, R.E.M. and U2 who dominated the top 100), the song did better than Public Image Ltd.’s “Seattle”, U2’s “In God’s Country” and others. So, for me that was very cool to see them featured on a KROQ top 100 yearly listing which is a major accomplishment!
So, this brings me back to “Ultimate”.
The musical selection of Pseudo Echo’s “Ultimate” is an album that showcases the musical style that fans loved about the group and that was the “Autumnal Park” and “Love an Adventure” music years but also showcasing their newer music as well, giving you a small taste of what the band can still deliver to music listener’s today.
If anything, this is a solid compilation for those who want to jump into Pseudo Echo but not knowing their music or for those who enjoyed their music before (like myself who owned the cassette tapes that are unlistenable today because they are so warped, so an upgrade was very much needed). While not a best album, you do get many of the band’s best songs on this album.
Pseudo Echo’s “Ultimate” is definitely recommended!
