Enlarge imageBy Mick Stingley
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - The highly influential, curiously named post-punk ensemble Echo and the Bunnymen romanced the sold-out crowd at New York’s Irving Plaza on Sunday with an intimate evening of lush melodies and mournful pop spanning 25 years of the band’s career.
Opening with "Going Up," (the first track on the band’s 1980 debut album "Crocodiles"), frontman Ian McCulloch chain-smoked his way through song after song, while Will Sergeant dazzled the crowd with his guitar work. The two are the only original members of the group, which was rounded out by four sidemen on drums, keys, bass and guitar. Nevertheless, it was the Ian and Will show from start to finish.
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Rightly so. Sergeant’s driving riffs, haunting sustain and Spaghetti Western vibrato created the perfect soundscape for McCulloch to vamp on. The charging bass drive of the B-men’s songs, the group’s layered guitars and McCulloch’s crooning was once a stark contrast to the commercial pop of the mainstream, yet now it seems delightfully contemporary, belying any nostalgia. Such bands as Embrace and Coldplay clearly revere the Bunnymen (in fact, Coldplay should be paying royalties, not just homage), so it was refreshing to see that the crowd was not just ageing hipsters on an ’80s pilgrimage, but a well-mixed collection of young and old.
The band favoured a set that was long on hits, though they worked in a couple of songs from the new release "Siberia" (Cooking Vinyl), notably the merry, shimmering pop number "Stormy Weather." "Bring on the Dancing Horses" and "Killing Moon" were standouts, while a medley of the Doors’ "Roadhouse Blues" with "Villiers Terrace" cleverly demonstrated the band’s muscular rock side.
McCulloch, who wore his sunglasses throughout the night, has the breezy nonchalance and rakish charm of a Peter O’Toole character. As clear as his voice is when he croons, McCulloch is utterly unintelligible when addressing the audience between songs in his thick Liverpudlian accent. But that hardly mattered to the round-faced girls and stick-thin model types who cooed and danced to every song, shouting his name.
Although they never charted on the U.S. pop singles chart, the band played two encores filled with college-radio hits. McCulloch yelped "Is this the blues I’m singing?" on "Rescue" and turned to plaintive shouting on the chorus of "The Cutter," before returning to throaty, soulful beauty on "Lips Like Sugar," a staple of every college mix-tape from the ’80s. "Ocean Rain" closed the night, and fans hung around the stage hoping to catch a glimpse of McCulloch even as the house lights came up.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
