Echo & the bunnymen: Classic or Dud?

...and the Bunnymen's UK tour has been cancelled. This according to Black Submarine's twitter feed (it's Nick McCabe and Simon Jones' new band - they were opening all dates for the tour)

Eh....tbh their whole comeback hasnt really been up to it.

Wished them all the goodwill esp after De Freitas but they just seem to be THERE now....its hard to imagine Mac the mouth in his pomp being satisfied with this

evergreen = last album i picked up by this band.

saw them in 2005 at glastonbury .. and they were just going through the emotions to say the least.

now thats its 2014, has mac the mouth found somewhere to live ?

last time the promo machine kicked in, he was supposedly living in the studio as he had moved out of the marital home due to a full on midlife crisis kicking in (same era as the live gig meltdown as above) ..

The press release kinda half alluded to stuff like that.

Yeah, here we go:

http://swellpublicity.com/ECHO-THE-BUNNYMEN-ALBUM

Read into it all what you will, especially these bits:

A year ago, Ian McCulloch found himself in a dark place. After leading Echo & The Bunnymen through 35 years of epic highs and turbulent lows, the singer realised it was time to take a break and look inwards. Although the group’s last album, 2009’s ‘The Fountain’, had been enthusiastically received, McCulloch’s songwriting partnership with Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant had virtually ground to a halt. What’s more, years of rock excess and running away from personal problems had left him feeling adrift and unsettled. “I wasn’t happy with a lot of stuff,” admits the singer. “Emotionally I was at a very low ebb.”

Yet from this slough of despond, ‘Meteorites’ unexpectedly began to take shape. Holed up in his Liverpool flat, mired in self-reflection, McCulloch started writing music on a bass guitar that was lying around, a process that instantly proved cathartic and fruitful. “Straight away I felt better for it,” he explains. “I had been thinking of taking five years off on an island, or whatever, but suddenly all these songs came from nowhere. It was really exciting and fresh. This record’s about my personal journey, my rebirth, even if it is a Bunnymen record.”

...Deeply personal and subtly revelatory, it sees McCulloch finally facing up to his demons with an honesty that his previous records, however emotionally raw, have invariably shied away from. The singer was encouraged to confront his feelings by legendary producer Youth, who had worked on McCulloch’s 2012 live solo recording, ‘Holy Ghosts’, and who was drafted in to work on the nascent ‘Meteorites’ at his Attic studio in London.

“Youth said, ‘Your lyrics are brilliant, but you’ve got something to get out’ - about where I was at that time,” explains McCulloch. “So I followed his advice. I wrote from the soul, more so than the heart and the brain. It scares the hell out of me, and surprises me, how much I’ve been able to reveal without putting a veil over it. There were signs all through my life of what was down there inside me - [‘Crocodiles’ album track] ‘Rescue’ touched on it as an 18 or 19 year old. But maybe it was seeing the future more than what was happening at the time.”

Among McCulloch’s startling self-realisations was that his upbringing in Liverpool may have profoundly scarred him in ways he hadn’t comprehended – a subject he addresses on album closer ‘New Horizons’. “I realised the first word of the song was going to be ‘if’– ‘If I got distant, from all the gifts that heaven sent…’ It was me finally seeing what people close to me could see for so many years, like my wife, friends. I remember, Lorraine saying, ‘You think it hasn’t affected you, the way your dad was?’ – he was a compulsive gambler, everyone loved him, but they also thought he was fraught with deep problems. But I was like, ‘No, he wasn’t fucked up, he was my dad.’ Lorraine said, ‘You don’t see how much you are your dad.’ So instead of me going, ‘Fuck yeah, I’m a twat’, I wanted to write about it, and see where it gets me and takes me.”

...Will Sergeant – the only other surviving Bunnyman from the original line-up that came together on the Liverpool post-punk scene in 1978 – was absent from the initial recording sessions of ‘Meteorites’, but a playback of several tracks at Youth’s house in London persuaded him to contribute guitar. Sergeant’s parts were recorded at his home near Liverpool as the deadline to finish the album rapidly approached. The results, reminiscent of his best and most inventive work with the group, underscored the feeling that ‘Meteorites’ wasn’t a McCulloch solo album, but a bona fide and worthy addition to the Bunnymen’s canon.

ahh .. indeed this does read like a post midlife crisis awakening ..

saw them in SF last night for the first time ever and they were incredible. I gather Ian is poorly behaved at times, but we got none of that and his voice was great. Local SF man Kelley Stoltz (who is a massive, massive Echo fan and about 10/12 years ago did a Crocadiles show which is legendary to, well, some people) was invited to be in the band for this tour handling all the rhythm guitar duties so it was extra special for the SF audience, a good portion of whom are friends of his. All in all an incredible night.

also they played nothing newer than "nothing lasts forever". I could have done with some songs from Siberia which I think is a great album, but not really missing anything else

Sounds like they're keeping the correct focus, then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1B6LrOmNsg

i decided this is the year i finally get into Echo & the Bunnymen. they are a band i have always liked and now i am listening to their albums in full for the first time. "Porcupine" is so great. i wish i had that voice, his vibrato is so glorious. this is some great stuff!

The break and build up to Shankar's violin in Heads Will Roll is the best damn thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veRBiHeUTp8

this video rules

porcupine's my favorite, one of the all-time guitar LPs for me and an apex of that post-punk snake charmer vibe that so many bands of the decade visited but seldom like THIS.

when i was 15 and would buy things i saw written on other people's leather jackets, and was also a sucker for weird band names, I bought a cassette of Porcupine with my paper route money at Har Mar Mall and put it in my walkman -- i have the most vivid memory of walking through the arcade there as The Cutter came into my head, what a holy shit moment.

Classic classic classic classic - Echo & the Bunnymen are my all-time favourite band and I love everything they did. I'm always thinking that while I claim Ocean Rain is the greatest album of all time, the real answer might secretly be Porcupine.
The first four albums are the undenyable perfect classics, but IMO all other albums have plenty of amazing stuff on them too.

I have met Ian McCulloch several times and he's always been super nice to me. My greatest experience was when he toured his solo album Slideling and I caught him after the show. I told him how much I loved 'Kansas' from that album and he realized it was one of the few he hadn't played - so he sang the first verse and the chorus to me, on the spot.

Seeing them tomorrow night with the Violent Femmes which is a very weird bill to me but I like both so hey. I can't wait.

Ooh jealous!

I super regret not going to the Ocean Rain at Radio City Music Hall show a decade or so ago

xp - my friend Ava is opening that show! Wish I was on the East Coast to see the whole thing.

Oh, that's cool! Will certainly let you know how it is. My best friend from college (who now lives in LA) is going to be in town and coming with me and earlier today I realized that while I've seen her lots since we were at NYU, this will be the fist show we've seen together in 18 years which is crazy and now I feel very old.

loved the use of jimmy brown in i don't feel at home in the world, what a track

Two different trails on uk TV have used bunnymen tracks in the past month. It's like it's a thing now.

(Second season of French drama on bbc4 used a nouvelle vague version of all my colours, and that thing about the history of a Liverpudlian house is using killing moon)

I agree with Not Jon upthread, Porcupine for the sound, esp. Heads Will Roll, but Ocean Rain for the songs

All I need imo.

What a fine idea!

https://www.thirdmanbooks.com/catalog/bunnyman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t620DfthImk

The first half of Will's book is not good.

Maybe I've read too many of these memoirs recently but I'm always impatient to get past:

What did the parents do?/who was musical in the family?/The Beatles/Bowie on TOTP/Sex Pistols/Ramones first album/older brother into Genesis and Henry Cow/OGWT/inadequate parent's stereo system/wasn't growing up in the suburbs during the 60s-70s shite?/school days (waaaaay much of this in Will's book)/crap clothes/first instrument/first girlfriend/college/university/dole/hash/cheap beer/getting a kicking/street fashion...

All that part eats up the entire first half of the book, the second half, much better. Starting with Eric's, but I didn't realise that this is just Vol.1 and it stops with Pete DeFreitas joining the band, booooo

A bit like Brett Anderson's first book, then.

want to read it just to see how it compares narratively to Julian Cope's Head On

It's much less colourful or interesting, but probably more accurate. Pretty much the same tone as Stephen Morris or Peter Hook's bios.

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

^ La Via Luonge | featuring Echo & the Bunnymen | A film by Bill Butt | Nacho Restoration | 1981

i know the name "La Via Luonge" as a solo cd of will's, on ochre records, which had some connection to the local record shop in cheltenham, so they'd stock all the Glide stuff. but have never seen the above.

https://www.discogs.com/Will-Sergeant-Weird-As-Fish-Le-Via-Luonge/release/900378

love the krautrock roadtrip vibe of that film, haven't seen it for years

i think i like the instrumental music from it more than i like most of their records tbh

Not sure which is considered the best Bunnymen thread but they're sounding incredible tonight (playing old stuff/random YouTube stuff after clicking through on someone else's Tweet earlier).

Will Sergeant is about to do a City Lights THird Man books webinar alongside Bobby Gillespie. Not sure if there is a Facebook feed but there has been before.

I saw Ian McCulloch in concert once, about 20 years ago. I thought it would make me appreciate Echo and the Bunnymen, but it didn't. I do like Seven Seas, though. That song seems very romantic in a Morrissey kind of way—very operatic (probably because it sounds like 'O sole mio).

There are a slew of alternative acts from that 80s that all had these Mixolydian songs that all blend together in my mind: The Cutter, Lips Like Sugar and many others by Echo and the Bunnymen; also Primitive Painters by Felt (who I otherwise like), She Sells Sanctuary by the Cult, Uncertain Smile by The The, and I'm sure there are others I can't think of right now. I was an adolescent when the 90s alternative thing hit, and sometimes a DJ would come on the radio and start playing records from when he was in college, and it would always be one of these records. I have a bad association with them but I don't exactly know why.

Speaking of Seven Seas: is this the origin of the Tortoise track title "The Taut and Tame"? Ian McCulloch says this in the lyric. Or, is this a phrase or reference to something else that I'm just not familiar with?

these Mixolydian songs that all blend together in my mind

That's unusual! Do you have problems with ♭VII chords outside of 80s alternative?

is this the origin of the Tortoise track title "The Taut and the Tame"

That was my assumption.

I thought those City Lights talks turned up on youtube shortly afterwards. Not seeing it appear yet but it is Will Sargeant, Bobby Gillespie and a couple of other talking heads talking together about recently published memoirs.
Goad to hear that Sargeant already has the next section underway since the first book ends before the first lp.
Lasted about an hour and 10 minutes.

Do you have problems with ♭VII chords outside of 80s alternative?

Nope, it's mostly just in that context. It doesn't bother me in Krautrock, or 60s Psychedelia, or Post Rock, or in an Indian Raga. But if I hear "Perfect Skin" by Lloyd Cole it makes me cringe a little.

Buh buh bite the nose off and make it the most of

SWUNG FROM A CHANDALIER

Couldn't cut the muuuuuustarrrrrd

Rolo McGinty remembers Pete de Freitas on the anniversary of his passing.

https://www.facebook.com/rolo.mcginty/posts/pfbid02Lx9ozR8uVgYLX6bAKKzaVvD5vsLTGCwmqqhLrQCr2s8tnpcAknkAfPTuVmay9R7xl

Well well. Per Echo's social media:

We have just posted what I think is maybe the greatest live film of Echo and the Bunnymen over on our YouTube channel.
Filmed live at Zeche Bochum, Germany, March the 5th 1983 during the Porcupine European Tour.
Broadcasted by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in the Rockpalast TV programme.

1 Going Up
2 With A Hip
3 Gods Will Be Gods
4 Show Of Strength
5 Zimbo (All My Colours)
6 The Cutter
7 Rescue
8 My White Devil
9 Porcupine
10 Crocodiles
11 All That Jazz
12 The Back Of Love
13 Heads Will Roll
14 Heaven Up Here
15 Over The Wall
16 Do It Clean
17 Villiers Terrace
18 No Dark Things
19 A Promise

And here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5krHYQ6SxkM

first part of will's biography is 99p on amazon uk this month

ian on sky arts' Great Songwriters this week (last week). very fidgety and rambling but always entertaining.

likes cryptic crosswords, doesn't get Only Connect though.

odd choice of songs though (killing moon, dancing horses, proud to fall, unstoppable force)

Steinbeck et al, they just wrote novels, they don't have to sing them...

I think the second volume of Will's bio comes out very soon.

The way Will describes the current dynamics of the band makes me feel sad, he comes across as quite enervated by the whole business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FoIifB2Ylk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1QFubPHyZc