Echo and the Bunnymen

I don't like it as much as I used to, but then it was only a fiver, so I guess it was worth it to find out. Still, I do like the album. "Higher Hell" is good for a long raincoat song, and I still like the last two songs a lot.

Yes indeed (I've found them for very cheap, actually). As Geir notes, Heaven Up Here is now fantabulous sounding.

does this have deeper meaning, perchance?

free 'Best Of The Bunnymen' cd free in the 85p Daily Star Sunday, er, tomorrow (it's aleady tomorrow in some parts of london, particularly the parts near railway stations)

Killing Moon
The Cutter
Nothing Lasts Forever
Rescue
The Back Of Love
Ocean Rain
Bring On The Dancing Horses

All songs recorded live at Shepherd's Bush Empire November 1st 2005.

ie it's the same as the 'Me, I'm All Smiles' cd and the 'Dancing Horses' dvd, only smaller.

One of the few bands whose Peel sessions aren't better than their studio counterparts. I wonder why...

nothing lasts forever seems out of place

It's the song that most star readers are likely to know

how can people hate this band?!?!?!

SRSLY!

srsly 3rded

Echo & The Bunnymen were martyrs for the cause of meaninglessness.

Nobody else in the history of recorded music wrote so many songs that were about nothing whatsoever. Not Spike Jones, not Anthony Newley, not Gerard Kenny, not Kajagoogoo. Not even Robert Smith.

"Spare us The Cutter!"

Q. What is "The Cutter", Ian?
A. Well, it's kind of, like, you know, something that holds you back. Y'know?

meaninglessness with absolute conviction. gotta love them for that.

It's the song that most star readers are likely to know

Are you saying the average Star reader is into arse-end-of-Britpop band-wagon jumpers? Why wouldn't the average Star reader be more likely to know Killing Moon or Bring on the Dancing Horses? What age is the average Star reader and did he watch Top of the Pops?

Anyway, they don't suck. Even the arse-end-of-Britpop stuff was better than most of what Britpop spat out.

Big coats are great.

Even the arse-end-of-Britpop stuff was better than most of what Britpop spat out

yup. "what are you going to do with your life?" is a great album. which i should look for, in the big CD cupboard. some time.

and you're OTM about the coats, too.

the bunnymen weren't "martyrs for meaninglessness." they weren't U2 as far as big "messages" go (and given their feud with U2, i am sure that they take great pride in that) and mcculloch's lyrics could often be daft to the point of apparent incomprehensibility (and yes, even superficially meaningless in the case of "the cutter"). at the risk of sounding pretentious, though, the bunnymen's lyrics were all ABOUT fighting AGAINST meaninglessness -- at least on a personal level (though not a global one). the struggle to find or create meaning is what gives their music its bite and drama -- especially on crocodiles and heaven up here. maybe they were a bit drama-queeny, but they weren't aiming to be nihilistic or meaningless.

I've always loved 'em (thru their original releases, anyways), even though i've always thought they cared a bit too much about their image.

For my money, Heaven Up Here is one of the best albums of the 80s.

25th anniversary version of crocodiles finally hit the mat this morning, two and a half weeks after amazon said they'd posted it. it's more extra tracks than it is actual lp. and is fantastic. even the stuff that only made it onto b-sides is wonderful.

(wilder + 8 extra tracks in the same parcel and currently shuffling around my ears. it's liverpool 1981 again.)

Dr C has nearly persuaded me (upthread), but anymore reasons why I should go back to Fopp and get 'Flowers' for a quid?

You confused me there. Those 25th anniversary editions came out in 2003. Get them and the box and you've got it all.

Except for their Peel sessions.

Love the intro to 'The Cutter'; love the swirling instrumental break too - their great speciality.

One of the few bands whose Peel sessions aren't better than their studio counterparts. I wonder why...

Too much cocaine.

Or, not as much cocaine as during the studio sessions.

Your guess is as good as mine.

I love their Peel Sessions. I'm sorry, but I'm hearing some absolute best-of-Bunnymen stuff in my ears, here.

People rolling round on the carpet
Biting wool and pulling string

What I'm trying to say is I'm having a late life re-realization that this band is great. And the bonus tracks on this Crocodile reissue are exactly what you want out of bonus tracks - "Simple Stuff" is, quote, meaninglessness with absolute conviction and I love it.

Been listing to this 2CD comp recently instead of the albums, feel like they just about nailed it.

I think I'm of that age where I too frequently think "I hope that's not a death related thread revive."

and the great thing about cd's being unfashionable is that you can get that cd in MINT condition for 1£ on discogs

crazy

ordered

Every single time I hear Shankar's violin starts up in that middle section of Heads Will Roll it never fails to make the hairs on my neck stand up.

Simple Stuff is really good and gets extra points for the Elevators-style jug-impersonating-a-roosting-dove noises (can't actually recall too many other bands trying that tbh)

YES! God, yes, I love it when people do that. Only other band of the 80s I can think of that attempted it were Dead Moon on "Graveyard."

I love it when two groups of people do that, I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUsY0HJ7KM

not an XTC cover lol

The Mojo article on Mac from a couple of months back made me feel sad, he seems to live a very interior life now, mates looking after him/taking care of his shopping, at the mercy of OCD or unspecified mental health issues, living alone in a small house. I didn't know any of this.

Oh wow, I'd like to read that. His voice is absolute shit now. Enjoyed the last show I saw, but he sounded horrible. I assume it's decades of drug abuse catching up to him.

seen them twice in the last 3 years (and many times before) and found Mac to be in good voice. most recent show was great and they seem to have a fresh wave of younger fans. full, enthusiastic house. my biggest complaint is how reined-in Will feels, want him to turn it up and slash.

The Mojo article on Mac from a couple of months back made me feel sad, he seems to live a very interior life now, mates looking after him/taking care of his shopping, at the mercy of OCD or unspecified mental health issues, living alone in a small house. I didn't know any of this.

Mm. I'm going to have to dig this up but something's stuck with me for a very long time -- back in early 1992, when Mysterio came out, he did a Melody Maker interview where he said something along the lines of growing older and going a little insane would be fun. Usual 'touch of madness' stuff, I guess, or meaning it more as eccentricity, I doubt he meant anything more by that, I hope. A couple of weeks later there was a letter from someone who served in caring for people in such conditions and whoever it was made very clear that there really wasn't much fun about that in real life. You could say that was humorless or an overreaction -- and again I'll have to dig up the pieces in question, I still have the issues from then -- but it served as a salient note to 21-year-old me on the matter, and now hearing this, well, trite to say it but be careful what you wish for indeed.

Ouch, didn't read that interview, that sounds pretty sad. The Bunnymen are my all-time faves, I've met Mac several times and he's always super nice to me (it helps that I tend to stroke his ego with honest compliments), last time was 2 years ago. He always seems rushed, though, and he stays inside the venue for hours after the rest of the band already left.

My most magic music moment ever was after a Mac solo show in 2003. He played most of his then-released Slideling album in a fairly intimate setting, was in a great mood, I spoke to him afterwards outside of the venue and said that my favourite song off the album was 'Kansas'. He realised that it was one of the few songs he didn't do, then sang the first verse and chorus on the spot, just for me.
If I already had him on a pedestal before, he can't do anything wrong in my eyes since that moment.

Man, I hope he's happy & will sort himself out.

The tone of the article was interesting, in that it didn't make a big deal out of Mac's home life, the most jarring detail was that his close friends shop for him which seemed quite odd, as if he wasn't somehow able to look after himself. It was just a surprise that he seems to be happy living such a routinely hermetic lifestyle, it didn't go into much detail about the extent of his compulsions either.

Listening to the last few tracks of Slideling as a result of this thread and I’m finding it surprisingly wonderful.

The part I remember from the Mojo article is that Mac can't stop obsessing over whether or not his house has been invaded by insects.

Thanks to this thread revive, I queued up Mac's "Slideling" and Echo's "Siberia". I had bailed on them after the decent but unimpressive "Evergreen". "Slideling" is solid but "Siberia" is pretty damn good, it's full of call-backs to their salad days both lyrically and musically. Sort of 'if you can't beat them play the old stuff in a new way'.

Thanks for that - I'm always happy to see some love for the later Bunny stuff. I'll stand by every release of theirs, like a psychofan. I hold Evergreen in higher regards than Siberia, though.
My favourite part on Siberia is the varied and rich final set of four tracks (Siberia - Sideways Eight - Scissors In The Sand - What If We Are?).

Ok, how about a best-of playlist, Evergreen->present?

Forgiven off Evergreen is one of my absolute favorite Echo tunes.

Yeah, I just listened that and it's a great closer.

Also, is Mac being as unsubtle as I think with "I Want To Be There When You Come"?

I haven’t heard that since it was on the airwaves, but yes

Ok, how about a best-of playlist, Evergreen->present?

Sure, I'll give you a post-reformation Bunnyguide.

A couple of things to get out of the way first:

-Mac's voice turned somewhere in the '90s, very likely because of smoking and in a way much like Leonard Cohen's voice cracked ten years earlier - although I'd say Mac kept more power and range than Lenny did.
I'd argue that his vocals are still very impressive. It also seems to me that he gets more acclaim with each subsequent tour. But - you won't ever get that old voice back, and if you're beholden to that old voice, you may never really get into the later stuff.

-In a way, we're talking about a very different band from classic '80s Bunnymen, simply because Les Pattinson left and Pete DeFreitas is dead. Les was a great bass player, Pete was a great drummer and while you won't find Mac agreeing, both had quite some influence on the music. Post-reformation Echo & the Bunnymen is VERY much driven by Mac. The drum & bass of the later Bunnymen will hardly be very noticable, a lot of the music will solely be written by Mac. As he's a great songwriter, there's plenty of great stuff to be found. But thing are different, and if the classic music/instrumentation drew you in more than the vocals or the songs
themselves did, I might alternatively direct you to Will Sergeant and Les Pattinson's 2013 collaboration Poltergeist, which released one album of awesome instrumental psychedelic rock called 'Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder)'

Now on to the albums. I'll write a bit about each and then limit myself to listing three songs per album which are, in my opinion, the biggest strengths and representatives of those records.

Evergreen
The album Mac and Will did after getting the band back together with Les, is also the last one with Les. Comeback single Nothing Lasts Forever probably became their only post-reformation 'classic', it must have been performed at every gig since. For many years now, with a cover of Walk On The Wild Side and some lines of Coney Island Girl added to it, done so often now that I'm really tired of hearing that version... But the studio recording is a beauty. I think I Wanna Be There (When You Come) is a very cool single, despite the iffy title, and it saddens me that they never do this one live, nor anything else of this album.

Absolute highlights: Nothing Lasts Forever, Empire State Halo, Forgiven

What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?
Most Bunnymen fans will tell you: this is more an Ian McCulloch solo album. Les was pushed away, Will was sidelined (and has been fairly vocal to the fact that he doesn't actually like the album himself), some old B-sides of Mac's earlier solo run were recycled, Mac even brought his friends from the Fun Lovin' Criminals in to play along on a couple of tracks.
So, see it as a Mac solo album featuring Will, but then it's probably his best solo album!

Absolute highlights: Rust, History Chimes, Fools Like Us

Flowers
This is one where Will's guitar magic is more prominent. It's a bit more mellow (not saying that because of the track Supermellow Man), it has a lovely warm feeling to it (not saying that because of the track Burn For Me). They performed some songs of this album back when it came out and they sounded great live, it's a shame that they don't do any of those anymore.

Absolute highlights: Flowers, An Eternity Turns, Burn For Me

Siberia
They got Hugh Jones back for this one, the guy who produced '80s classic Heaven Up Here. Although it doesn't sound a lot like that album, there's indeed some cool throwbacks to the days of old.

Absolute highlights: Parthenon Drive, Siberia, Scissors In The Sand

The Fountain
I love it, but this one's probably the hardest to defend. The guy who produced it was known for working for boy bands, it could be argued if he was a good fit. There's a couple of songs on here which give the impression like they were meant to be hit singles, but are so straightforward that they really don't have much to offer (Tracks 1 and 3: Think I Need It Too and Do You Know Who I Am?). Also, there's proably the worst song they ever did, one called Proxy (which was apparently influenced by Roxy Music (and, if I recall correctly, Wire)).
So what's left? Well, I'd say everything else. Especially album closer Idolness of Gods, which is really one of my favourite things they ever did.

Absolute highlights: The Fountain, Everlasting Neverendless, The Idolness Of Gods

Meteorites
I think this is probably my favourite of the post-reformation bunch. Unfortunately, the first half/side is not without flaws. After the incredible title track opener, the album all but undermines itself with Holy Moses, which (while Mac would disagree, they also performed this one live) really is one of their weaker tracks. It kicks back in with Constantinople, only to follow with Is This A Breakdown? which I never found all that convincing. The record picks up shortly afterwards and then holds up a very high quality all through the second half/side.

Absolute highlights: Meteorites, Constantinople, Lovers On The Run, Market Town, New Horizons - sorry, really can't choose here!

Hi, what about Electrafixion maybe?

I like 'What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?', got it cheap after it came out, listened to it a lot as a teenager but not for a few years now. I can hear how it's more a McCulloch solo LP than a true band album. I've not checked out any of the subsequent albums - not been taken with any of the odd tracks I've heard from them.

That first track on Flowers always set the bar way too high for the rest of the album to me. That opening tremolo'd out guitar riff and Ian's opening lyric ("Met Jesus up on a hill, he confessed I was dressed to kill."). . . there's just nowhere to go but down after that.

I loved Evergreen and What Are You Going to do With Your Life? when they came out. Haven't heard any of this stuff in at least a decade, though.

I was really into Ian's Slidling album from 2003 when it first came out. I'd go out on a limb and say it's probably my favorite thing he did post-Candleland.

Hi, what about Electrafixion maybe?

Electrafixion - Burned
A very strong, energetic rock album. It's strange that Mac & Will made up both the core of Electrafixion and every Bunnymen album since, yet their sound became much less heavy afterwards and they never revisited Electrafixion, no song ever appeared on an Echo & the Bunnymen setlist and I can't even recall having heard them reference the record since (one exception: 'Baseball Bill' from Evergreen was originally an Electrafixion song).
Mac teamed up with Johnny Marr for some songwriting, a couple of tracks appear on Burned and are highlights. The story is that they got an entire album worth of songs together but the master tapes were stolen or lost or something - it's weird and a real shame, I really hope some more stuff will resurface some day.

Absolute highlights: Lowdown, Zephyr, Never

Lovely. ta.

I was going to add "and "Reverberation?" but hey. (I have it on cassette - Good album, but.)

last time i looked the Electrafixion cd was out of print and going for more than i'd pay for something (ok, that's got better). i have some of the singles but never bothered with the album.

i'd like to point out that Will has interesting solo records of his own available, under his own name and as Glide.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/12521-Will-Sergeant

You should be able to get the Electrafixion album for pretty cheap really - except if you want the 2CD edition with b-sides and live tracks, somehow that one's impossible to get. A bit of a shame, as some of those b-sides were excellent, particularly from the Lowdown EP ('Holy Grail' is one of Electrafixion's finest songs and 'Razor's Edge' is a particular favourite of mine).

Will's solo stuff is really cool indeed. Besides his own stuff (and that amazing Poltergeist album he did with Les Pattinson (mentioned in my lengthy post)), he recently also started his internet radio http://spacejunkradio.com/ where he plays a great choice of songs from his personal collection.

I was going to add "and "Reverberation?" but hey. (I have it on cassette - Good album, but.)

I had already thought about it as well...

Reverberation
This is the one with the other singer. Mac left, Pete died, Will and Les recruited Noel Burke and went on to release this record. It's a divisive album among fans: it seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing, strongly dependent on how important it is for people to have Ian McCulloch as the singer of the band called Echo & the Bunnymen. It sounds silly, what's in a name, but this one's always been up for debate: should they have gone for a different band name or not? Especially seeing how there were exactly the same amount of original band members present for Reverberation, as there were for everything post-Evergreen.
On the other hand, the band name will place the album in the light of the classic '80s record, the voice may sound like it's going for a similar style but it is clearly different from what came before, the songwriting is also different - even if the other band members had a big impact on the songs before, there was always a Mac core to them.
So it's easy to dismiss reverberation, especially for Ian McCulloch-fans or for those who really only like the first four albums. BUT - open up to it, judge the album only by itself, and you'll find very rich music with lovely warm vocals. It is a very good album. (Is it a good Echo & the Bunnymen album? Does it matter?)

Absolute highlights: Thick Skinned World, Flaming Red, False Goodbyes

Oh here's a special beast from the post-reformation period: November. It's the B-side of the 'Think I Need It Too' digital single from The Fountain. I think it's vastly superior to the A-side, if they'd put it on the album it would have contended with Idolness of Gods for the best track on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD6nl5e11Dk

Thanks for the run-down, I'll spin a playlist of your picks and report back!

I love that Electrafixion album - the tracks with Marr are stands-outs, of course, but the real treat is all the live versions that came on the singles. In the mid-90s, it was really exciting to hear Mac (and Richard Butler with Love Spit Love) try their hand at a grunge-y sound. It was a welcome jolt.

I just realised that my Evergreen & WAYGTDWYL picks are all pretty slow tracks, as are two of the three Flowers choices, so if you'll go through them in chronological order it might be a bit of a (very pleasant) snooze.

To get some energy back in, you could replace a random Evergreen choice with the album's title track.
Alternatively, add 'Fish Hook Girl' to the WAYGTDWYL-mix (maybe as a substitute for History Chimes). It was a Rust b-side which made it to the setlists of that time.

You might also still check out the EP they did after WAYGTDWYL:

Avalanche
This EP features two pretty covers (esp. Hardin's Hang On To A Dream is gorgeous), three reworkings of old songs (nice enough alternate takes) and Avalanche as the one new recording - that one is a very good song.
I wrote earlier that I thought the not-so-great song Proxy was influenced by Roxy Music and Wire, but now I remember that they described Avalanche' title track, when it was a work-in-progress, as "Roxy meets Wire". (Proxy was definitely Roxy-influenced too - you could actually hear some Virginia Plain in it).

Absolute highlight: Avalanche (title track)

Yeah, I gave your original picks a listen today and it makes it seem like "Siberia" is when everything picks up. I made your suggested changes and will give it another go, but I understand why you like the "Meteorites" highlights so much.

OK, here's my run-down:

Evergreen/Nothing Lasts Forever/Forgiven - I own "Evergreen" and pulling it out for the first time in ages started this desire to catch up with the Bunnymen. But at this late date, I find "Evergreen" really patchy. I dig these tracks, though - "Forgiven" is really gorgeous.

What Are You Going To Do With Your Life/Rust - I found "Fools Like Us" to be unsatisfying so replaced it with the title track. These two are OK, solid but nothing special.

Fish Hook Girl/Avalanche - Damn, "Fish Hook Girl" is fantastic, full of interesting sounds and so much better than anything else I've heard from the album! And "Avalanche" is very good as well.

Flowers/An Eternity/Burn For Me - "Flowers" is OK but the other two are great, again pulling in interesting sounds and guitar lines. Mac's lyrics always seem incredibly personal and "Burn For Me" breaks my heart for him (and I love the double-tracked vocals).

Parthenon Drive/Siberia/Scissors In The Sand - "Parthenon Drive" is a rewrite of "Bring On The Dancing Horses" but since there are days I'd call that the single best thing they ever did, I love it. "Siberia" has that skittering beat from the early records and "Scissors" sounds like an Electrafixion out-take. Outstanding, I could probably go for one more from Siberia.

Everlasting Neverendless/The Idolness Of Gods - "The Fountain" didn't work for me so I jettisoned it, these two are much more interesting - the former is a great up-tempo number and the latter another one of their beautiful album closers. This is the point where I really start to notice Mac's voice going.

November - another fantastic b-side that should've made the album.

Meteorites/Constantinople/Lovers On The Run/Market Town/New Horizons - the psych touches hit you out of the gate, some of these tracks remind me of another band whose later work I cherry-pick, The Church. "Market Town" is a fantastic dance tune.

Overall, I really appreciate the help putting this together. There are lots of bands out there whose later work I find inconsistent but love to cherry-pick the best bits: The Fall, The Church, Pere Ubu. The Bunnymen now join that list.

Thank you for that nice feedback, that's a great read!

The WAYGTDWYL and Fountain tracks that didn't work for you so much, are all songs that Mac would put on his solo setlists... It wouldn't even surprise me if Will Sergeant dislikes the entire Fountain album (as he does WAYGTDWYL). You probably shouldn't bother with his later solo material.

One more from Siberia? Try 'Of A Life', it's the heaviest rocker on it besides 'Scissors' & was featured in the 2005 setlists. It has a lovely reference in the lyrics to their original best-of compilation, 'Songs to Learn and Sing'. While the rest of Siberia might be slower/softer, I think Of A Life might capture the spirit of the album best.

New album "The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon" is out. A couple of new tracks and a mess of re-recordings of stuff that didn't need re-recording. The new tracks are ok ("How Far?" is the better of the two) but Mac's voice continues to deteriorate.

The version of The Killing Moon sounds like one of the sentimental glove puppet renditions of songs you hear on a bank advert or when a supermarket is telling you about Christmas. Also Mac seems to have forgot the melody.

Whenever I hear of this band, I think of Rik from The Young Ones writing his letter -- "DEAR MR. ECHO..."

Finally got to listen to the new album, heard it three times now, I'm really loving it!

Disagree with Gerald here. I don't think it's a mess, there might not have been a necessity to re-record stuff but why not have some new infusions in old songs, possibly reaching a new audience.
The two new songs are pretty good IMO, both are growers.
Mac's voice: he sure doesn't sing like he did in the eighties, but he changed his approach and style to match his current voice, I think it's still amazing (see also my post upthread from Sept 4).

I'll admit that 'reworked classics' weren't something I was especially looking forward to, as Mac already did something similar with Holy Ghosts (a solo live show which got produced afterwards with additional strings and effects). And also, debates on the necessity are unavoidable; with that, you could bet beforehand that most people would negatively compare the new versions to the original classics.
There are indeed some similar approaches here as on Holy Ghosts. But I find the whole thing sounding remarkably fresh and good. There's a lot of beauty in the strings and things and everything is infused with the spirit of their live shows of the past decade.

Better than the originals? I think that should really not be an issue. These are different takes, which can perfectly exist together with the classics, without any invalidating the other. I'm also reminded of how Neil Young sometimes puts two different versions of the same song on the same album.

Nicky Wire wrote a great piece on the Manics' history with Echo & the Bunnymen and his very positive thoughts on the new album:

01/10/2018
“I’m lazy in every way apart from writing songs. I think I’m looking for the song that loves me back …”
Ian McCulloch // Mojo August 2018
Bands rarely ever arrive as the full package. Some manage to achieve that status through a lot of effort and a bit of luck; often though, there’s a magical element that sits just out of reach. Echo & the Bunnymen were the full package – maybe the first band of my youth to achieve that. They had amazing songs and lyrics that provoked and inspired; stunning wit and a look that was just perfection. There was no weak link visually, no bad leather jackets or mullets. And they had the ambition and the confidence to attempt unconventional ideas, whether it was heading to Iceland to do photos or getting their fans to do a group cycle ride around Liverpool for A Crystal Day. There wasn’t one piece out of place. This was a band to believe in.
The Bunnymen arrived in my world slightly later than they did for James, Sean and Richey. Heaven Up Here was totally James and Sean’s album; Porcupine was Richey’s – he used to play it to me all the time in university, Heads Will Roll and Clay particularly. I can remember being obsessed with the advert that ran in the NME declaring Ocean Rain as “the greatest album ever made”. It was such an incredible act of arrogance that was magnificently backed up by the record itself. That self-belief, the idea that you could create your own myths was hugely influential on me as a teenager. I can still smell the hairspray I was using at the point that Songs to Learn and Sing came out. Every kid who was interested in alternative music (there was no ‘indie’ music back then) had that album and Standing on a Beach by the Cure. It was an era when a greatest hits album was an actual landmark statement that really meant something to cherish and obsess over.
I’ve always thought of Ocean Rain as a cross-genre, cross-generational album, like ABBA’s Arrival or Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours. The songs transcend styles or trends; they were records your parents could learn and sing. That’s something that applies to much of the band’s rich catalogue. The run of singles from that album – the Killing Moon, Silver and Seven Seas – were staggering. For me, Silver connected so perfectly – the flow of words is real poetry. It’s the track that made me realise there was a deep, ice-cold mystery to his words. Coming to the end of school years, I’d become immersed in poetry, working from a starter kit of Larkin, Eliot and Dylan Thomas at that point. Here was someone writing words for music that had a natural poetic rhythm to them. No one else was doing that at the time – arguably, not many have managed it since either. Even with the Bunnymen’s peers, it was never quite the same.
Mac’s lyrics felt more like they’d been lifted from a 19th century poetry book by someone like John Clare or even Edward Lear; a kind of Victorian psychedelia, something almost arcane. Often, they seemed as if they were quoting from a life I just couldn’t understand yet:
“Stab a sorry heart / with your favourite finger
Paint the whole world blue / and stop your tears from stinging
Hear the cavemen singing / good news they’re bringing
Seven seas / swimming them so well
Glad to see / my face among them / kissing the tortoise shell”
One of the reasons the Bunnymen have endured over the years is their untouchable ‘otherness’. As a listener, it never felt like you could quite penetrate or puncture the lyrics. That was always a huge part of the appeal – a reason for diving back in, time and again into the lyrical vortex that Mac had created at the heart of this complete sound. He’s always had an incredible way of rhyming odd words, and of using a mass of words to create unique rhythms. They’re a hard band to dissect in terms of how they wrote – the genius myth-making of the Killing Moon arriving in a dream makes it hard to work out how they actually sat as a four-piece and worked on songs. And I’ve never known whether they’re natural or whether Mac wrote reams and reams of lyrics and tried to shoehorn them into songs.
That otherness is a reason why the Bunnymen – although an inspiration on so many artists (including polar opposites like Liam Gallagher or Chris Martin) – aren’t a band that are easy to emulate. Their sound is so perfectly mercurial, it’s hard to imagine anyone trying to recreating it without falling flat. Even though we channelled a lot of orchestral sweep of Ocean Rain for Everything Must Go, the Bunnymen’s biggest inspiration on us was always more stylistic. We borrowed imagery from them so often, whether it was the scene in the video for Seven Seas where Mac rips the wig off and smudges his lipstick which I directly ripped that off in the original You Love Us video; the severity of the Apocalypse Now-look uniforms they wore around the Shine So Hard era for the Holy Bible or just the bleakness of a Welsh beach for a photo shoot [Porthcawl for Heaven Up Here and Black Rock Sands for This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours].
Somehow, on the Stars, the Oceans & the Moon the Bunnymen manage to brilliantly reset the lyrics to some of their greatest songs, changing context, adding a whole new depth. Gone is the arrogance and towering self-belief of youth; in comes a deeper significance – at once a backwards gaze at life and a forward look at one’s own mortality. Until I met Mac, I’d assumed there was a massive streak of self-confidence running through everything he did; when I met him, it seemed like it actually was a real warmth and a fair amount of insecurity – as he himself once wrote, “Self-doubt and selfism / Were the cheapest things I ever bought.”
It’s a feeling that’s carried on this record. You can hear the pain, smell the cigarettes, taste the alcohol. It’s never any less powerful in this new context, everything now seems so much more direct. Where before, it seemed as though he was gazing outwards, at turbulent waters or at some monumental glacier, now he’s gazing in the mirror, looking in on himself. That aloofness has faded, to be replaced by a brutal honesty. To be able to hear a band you’ve lived with for most of your life reframing some of their most loved songs – it’s a very special privilege.
Nicky Wire, July 2018

Wait, I never said it was a 'mess', I just was down on the idea in the first place. And I especially like the new song "How Far", that's a winner.

But I abjure my negativity, better to embrace your enthusiasm for an old beloved artist, Valentijn!

the 4 songs they did on jools were ok (sonambulist and seven seas on the tuesday, sonambulist, killing moon and rescue on saturday). KM was very slow, almost croony, but it still worked.

Ever since I compiled the post-Reformation playlist, it's been my go-to Bunnymen. It really shows the power they still retain and Mac is still a hell of a singer.

One track not mentioned in our catalog review is "Scratch The Past", a fantastic overlooked b-side of "It's Alright".

Wondering if there's anything forthcoming...