Echo and the Bunnymen
Review of their gig in Vicar Street, Dublin, 24 November 2003
Gauche is his middle name. Crowned with a ridiculous mockBowie quiff, he dances like a drunken navvy, he
gives his soundman awful guff, and his between song patter is so doused in
Scouse that you wonder if English is his first language. He's all of this and
more but above all Ian McCulloch, lanky front man heading up Echo and the
Bunnymen, is a Rock God. 
I saw the Bunnymen in McGonagles in 1982 - Ian McCulloch was The Face, you knew
that this was a band that was going to conquer the world. If they were bothered.
Their recorded output was top notch-concise pop, darker than
The Cure but accessible and well structured. All it was going to take was
putting in the hard yards in the US, slumming it in the crummy motels, gigging
to audiences of three people in dustbowl towns where - as Diamond Dave Le Roth
memorably put it - the mosquitos bite you through your leather jacket. They gave
it a go but, unlike some of their rivals Mac and the lads reckoned that making
it big in the States was not worth it.
Mid-eighties it all went pear shaped -
McCulloch jumped ship, egos took over and the drugs most definitely did not
work. Rock bottom was reached the rest of the band recorded an appalling
psychedelic album with a different Where-The-Hell-Is-He-Now frontman. People
were lost along the way - Les Pattinson, the bass player, was called away on
domestic duties, while Pete De Freitas, great drummer, all round good egg, and
nearest thing to Bunnyman beefcake, bought it some time ago in a motorcycle
accident. McCulloch is still there of course, and crucially, Will Sergeant - no
oil painting but a criminally underestimated guitarist - also stayed the course.
In 1999 the reformed band released "What are you going to do with your life?",
part lounge classic, part musing on death and dust and decay. It's a lyrical and
melodic masterpiece. Mid-gig they do a glorious version of "Rust", one of this
great album's top cuts but the show itself fairly blasts off with "Show of
Strength ", the opener on "Heaven up Here", the album that broke them in the
mainstream market. Backed up with some power chords that even now can put your
hair on end and bedded down with a slide motif to die for, McCulloch sounds
like a husky angel, the band kicking up an absolute sound storm, till the
glistening fade, "hey I came in / right on cue / one is me / and one is you".
For the next 90 odd minutes classic follows classic-aside from his obvious
Lizard King fixation McCulloch can croon, and he can also turn to a huge
operatic roar-check out the chorus on "Back of love". The band rip through "Over
the Wall", "Crocodiles" and they draw heavily on their Greatest Hits collection
"Songs to learn and sing". There's a twitchy kicking version of "the Cutter",
"Seven Seas" is a sing-along, and "The Killing Moon", with its oriental guitar
lines, swishy rhythms and soaring chorus, lifts the roof off.
The Bunnymen treat us to great pop rock songs, music that's concise, witty and
lean. In the midst of all this they glide through "Bringing on the dancing
horses", as majestic a piece of melancholic pop music as you'll ever here. The
crowd called out for more and encore followed encore. McCulloch has given up on
the soundman, he swears at a punter wrecking his buzz, he chain-smokes, he swigs
on his lagers like some bona fide salty sea dog. The band love every minute of
it. And so do we.
Check out
an another review of this Echo & the
Bunnymen gig. Check out the CLUAS review
of Echo & the Bunnymen's compilation album
'Ballyhoo' (released in 1997). Check out the CLUAS review
of Echo & the Bunnymen's album 'Flowers'
(released in 2001).
