Echo & The Bunnymen - Under a Killing Moon

For fans of English pop music, the word Liverpool will always mean one thing above all: The Beatles. At the end of the Seventies, though, the city's glory days were revived by a handful of bands who, for a few years, put Liverpool back on the pop map, or at least allowed it to rival the ever-present London and Manchester for supremacy. Among these groups, one, Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant's Echo & The Bunnymen, achieved enough success to play for a few years in the "Premier League" of British pop, alongside U2 and Simple Minds, and to influence many of the subsequent evolutions of British music.
In recent years the band's name has been linked to Chris Martin's Coldplay, who have elected the Bunnymen as their patron saints (especially around the time of "A Rush Of Blood To The Head"), but their influence can't be ruled out when it comes to The Verve or the early Radiohead either.

Echo & The Bunnymen had going for them a positive attitude that led them to guide pop-minded youth out of the anguished shallows of post-punk, toward the mid-Eighties pop romanticism and the hedonistic celebrations of Cool Britannia. But they also had a quality that later bands, immersed in the hyperrealism of recent decades, have never managed to replicate: that naïve visionary quality which means that, listening to Ocean Rain, one can't help but feel transported back in time.
If anything, one might wonder about the reasons behind the relative obscurity (as we've seen, a fairly relative one) that has befallen a band that was a regular chart-topper in England and that was part of that second "British invasion" with which British new wave colonised American radio (where they are indeed remembered, as shown by the fact that their "The Killing Moon" opens the famous title sequence of the 2001 film "Donnie Darko"). One reason might be the less-than-likeable personality of singer Ian McCulloch, a man with a big mouth who never hesitates to brag. Take, for example, the string of gems he reeled off in a single interview ("Record Collector", January 2004) when asked to comment on his own songs: "The Killing Moon" is one of the ten greatest songs ever written", "Playgrounds And City Parks" is better than Shakespeare, I had goosebumps when I wrote it", "Over The Wall" — apparently the Stone Roses would never have existed without it", "Nothing Lasts Forever" is the most important song I've ever written, without it you wouldn't have had the greatest comeback of all time (obviously the Bunnymen's in 1997)"... Long live modesty.
In reality, this attitude probably stems, at least in part, from the awareness of never having received the recognition they deserved, because — and it's worth saying at this point — the Bunnymen's first four LPs are great pop records.

Legend has it that a band (The Crucial Three) formed in Liverpool in 1977, from which emerged the founders of the three groups destined to bring about the city's rebirth: Pete Wylie, later of Wah!; Julian Cope, later of the Teardrop Explodes (and later a solo artist, his brain fried by acid, author of weighty essays on krautrock, Japanese rock and prehistoric archaeology); and finally Ian McCulloch.
In 1978 the latter formed a trio with guitarist Will Sergeant and a drum machine named Echo. Bassist Les Pattinson soon joined, bringing the group to the name Echo & The Bunnymen.
Before recording their debut album, the machine was finally replaced by a real drummer, namely Pete De Freitas.

Preceded by the single "Pictures On My Wall", the LP Crocodiles came out in 1980, and effectively entered the canon of essential English new-wave albums. The band immediately reveal themselves to be extraordinary, starting with a rhythm section able to combine melodic flair, power and inventiveness, steering the music through a play of fluid dynamics, of constant tension and release, without ever losing sight of the song's essence. The real star, though, is Sergeant, who presents himself as a true guitar hero for the post-punk generation, armed with an incredibly rich repertoire of ideas and a style that revisits Sixties psychedelia in light of the innovations introduced by the first Television album, which revolutionised the approach to electric guitar. It's the guitarist who builds an album in which punk's conciseness and aggression merge with sinister, surreal atmospheres, carrying forward a sense of mystery and a taste for chiaroscuro shading that are distinctive traits of the wave sound.
So we have the nervous crescendos of "Going Up" and the frontal assaults of "Crocodiles" and "All That Jazz", proving there's no messing around and that youthful muscle is ready for a fight. Balancing them, though, are tracks made of impalpable textures, atmospheric guitar embroidery like "Stars Are Stars" or "Monkeys", where drum rolls launch a whirling arpeggio before letting the song stretch out into a slow psychedelia brimming with tension. "Pride" brings together elements of both types of song, moving from white-hot riff tension to dreamy, melodic openings, always underscored by Pattinson's prominent bass.
The real highlights, though, come later: among them is certainly "Rescue", with its hypnotic riff and epic chorus, which bring it close to U2 territory, making it a genuine ray of light amid the haze of the other tracks. "Villiers Terrace" is another peak, its guitar embroidery supporting a funkier rhythm section, accompanied by a simple keyboard motif courtesy of David Balfe of Teardrop Explodes. What remains are the nightmares of "Pictures On My Wall", an electro-acoustic ballad with sinister keyboard drones, and "Happy Death Men", a grand finale of guitar distortion, between shimmering stasis and emphatic, disorienting explosions.
Presiding over all this is the showman McCulloch, a young disciple of David Bowie and Jim Morrison, with his low, soulful timbre and his repertoire of laments and recitations, but also of excellent melodic instincts. Never truly over the top, charismatic, his contribution is the perfect complement to that blend of conciseness and expressiveness that makes Crocodiles a great album.
It's precisely its apparent simplicity (built on the classic bass-guitar-drums scheme) that makes this record so enduring, and deserving of a reissue that takes care to add "Read It In Books" (B-side of the first single) and that genuine shot of life that is "Do It Clean": pure rock, direct, driving, joyously melodic.

1981 was a decisive year for English new wave: the movement's various musical strands began to take shape as if heading toward a parting of the ways, but, just a year on from the death of Ian Curtis and the success of his "Closer", it seems to be the "dark" soul of the new wave that prevails. During the year, landmarks of "goth" come out, such as "Faith" by The Cure, "Juju" by Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Mask" by Bauhaus, while the former Joy Division members bid farewell to their departed leader with that moving masterpiece "Ceremony".

Only by considering this context can one understand why Heaven Up Here, Echo & The Bunnymen's second album, is so dark and dense: from the sketches of Crocodiles we move to a kolossal of gothic psychedelia, in which Will Sergeant's personality literally runs riot, exploding into a riot of expertly controlled electricity. In the liner notes to the 2003 reissue, McCulloch gives an almost opposite reading: "We were ready to give our version of a soul album, and become a soul band. Too much English music was angular and not sexy. I always had 'What Goes On' by The Velvet Underground in mind". The truth is that Echo & The Bunnymen are a complex band, one able to graft every kind of influence onto their underlying psychedelic foundation thanks to the musicians' shape-shifting skill, while the singer has always had a soul leaning that doesn't even let up on the band's chilliest record. Then again, the other strand of the wave sound is the danceable one (nowadays they call it punk-funk...), and that's why "With A Hip" sounds like an exercise in the style of PiL, while "All I Want" leans toward Talking Heads territory, as does "It Was A Pleasure", with a touch of Joy Division. These aren't the most successful tracks, though. Things work better with a series of songs that instead seem to belong to the dark-wave vein, with huge, prominent basslines, tribal, pounding percussion and, above all, plenty of guitars, heavily distorted, treated with various effects and pedals.
Hence a "Show Of Strength" that is exactly what it promises and introduces a granite-hard, powerful sound, but also the overwhelming title track, with its orgy of feverish sounds and echoes, and "All My Colours", a Jim Morrison-style litany set to funeral-march rhythms and soft exotic sounds. Not to mention the nightmare of "The Disease", with its icy spoken delivery set in a bare, spectral sonic environment. Never have the Bunnymen come so close to that "bad trip" feeling that characterised a band like the Banshees.
The best tracks are the more concise ones: "A Promise" is propelled by a melodic, razor-sharp bassline, over which the guitar jolts nervously, building through the verses into a crescendo that bursts, in the chorus, into a luminous, ascending riff. This is pop, indeed a new, positive anthem in the mould of "Rescue", on which McCulloch delivers one of his best shamanic performances: we're in U2 territory here, but the sonic clothing still resembles something Joy Division might have chosen.
Then there's "Over The Wall", the track that alone is worth the price of admission. It's a lysergic odyssey driven by a bass that coils in on itself and a drum pattern as metronomic as ever in controlling the ebb and flow of tension. The guitar gives a titanic performance, mounting powerfully, soaring into dark riffs against a bed of synths, then settling during the pauses. Just when the track seems to be closing in on itself, heading toward its conclusion, everything suddenly explodes again, the instruments hammering in unison toward one last majestic crescendo while the voice loses itself in total rapture. It's hard to say with certainty, as McCulloch himself does, that the Stone Roses wouldn't have existed without "Over The Wall", but it's undeniable that many drank from this well, not least U2 with The Edge on "Bullet The Blue Sky".
This record is hard to fully judge: the songs on the debut gave a more reassuring, seemingly more satisfying sense of completeness, whereas here we're faced with tracks whose direction isn't immediately clear. It's as if the main purpose were to let the guitarist freely lay his colours onto the canvas created by the others: when there's nothing left to add, the song can end. On the other hand, the arsenal of tricks and ideas deployed by Sergeant is so vast, and the study of dynamics so elaborate, that the listener can do nothing but surrender to the hypnosis of the rhythms and atmospheres the band builds. The emotional involvement isn't strong; this isn't an exorcism of pain or an emotional outpouring as with The Cure — here, if anything, we witness the creation of a parallel dimension that is entirely cerebral, psychological, an alternative world in which the band (the guitarist in particular) exercises its fantasy of control. In this, the band resembles the Banshees, who, however, exerted their power over the audience by assaulting and seducing it in an aggressive way.
The Bunnymen's psychic dimension is instead more nuanced, more neutral: they can flex their muscles or sink into gloom, but what matters to them is knowing they're in control of the situation.

1983 was the year of pop. Between '82 and '83, the supernovas of Michael Jackson's "Thriller", Duran Duran's "Rio", David Bowie's "Let's Dance" shine bright. A certain Madonna makes her debut. Faced with the spread of pop music variously leaning toward dance and electronics, new wave loses its driving force: both the aggression of post-punk and the existential anguish of post-Joy Division are now distant memories. Some simply split up (Bauhaus), others surprisingly convert to the new gospel, contributing to it decisively (New Order with "Blue Monday"), while others still head in the opposite direction, toward an epic, stadium-ready rock. This is where U2 finally veer off on their own path, with "War".
In this climate, Echo & The Bunnymen carve out their place, landing a lucky run of singles near the top of the English charts: "The Cutter", "The Back Of Love" and an emblematic "Never Stop (Discotheque)". The latter is perhaps the strongest concession to the market, with its tribal electronic-percussion groove accompanied by a sinuous bassline, over which rises a glorious pop chorus in pure McCulloch style. The best track, though, is "The Cutter", a driving cornucopia of psychedelic sounds, led by guest Ravi Shankar's violin, able to combine lysergic ecstasy and danceable intent with a genuine streak of auteur pop. The majestic explosion of strings at the end, over which McCulloch rises to the full height of his charisma, is the moment the Bunnymen emerge from the fog of post-punk into the air and light of a new British pop. "The Back Of Love" is another hit, replicating the other single's formula in a rockier key, with a majestic carousel of ups and downs between guitar reverb, snaking bass, and a crescendo of strings.
At the Royal Albert Hall shows, the crowd is invited to shed the band's fans' customary mournful garb (the raincoat, hence the nickname "raincoat band") and let loose: "Lay down thy raincoat and groove".
In short, dancing is fine for the Bunnymen, but without giving up on exploration, and above all on an ever deeper immersion in Sixties psychedelia.

The album Porcupine, propelled to success by the aforementioned singles, is a genuine descent into the most arcane depths of psychedelia, leaving very little room for easy chart-pop. Tracks like "My White Devil", "Clay", "Porcupine" see the band's usual rock sound move over an incredible backdrop of ambient echoes, reverb, sinister sonorities, Indian violins, for a sound as dense and layered as it is abstract and evanescent. The title track is a melodramatic ballad presenting a new and decisive setup: the rhythm guitar is acoustic, the lead guitar remains, of course, electric, with strings moving behind. This is the insight that, once simplified, would give rise to the sound of Ocean Rain. The psychedelic leanings of the earlier tracks are made explicit by the exotic gags of "Heads Will Roll", which starts with a flamenco guitar and ends in an Indian melody, and above all by a series of tracks in which the raga-rock tendencies already evident elsewhere are spelled out in full.
So it's the study of that fusion between rock and Indian music, explored in the Sixties by a range of bands running from The Byrds (in their most celestial, pop-leaning sense) to The Velvet Underground (for the demonic reading), that gives birth to the splendid closing trio of "Higher Hell" (slow and mystical), "Gods Will Be Gods" (ecstatic and danceable), "In Bluer Skies" (driven by electronic beats and a crescendo of Eastern riffs).
With these tracks we're a world away from the spectacular exoticism of the Banshees' "A Kiss In The Dreamhouse", and find ourselves instead in the realm of serious musical exploration, by now almost entirely freed from new-wave conventions and yet still entirely in line with that exploration of a world of dark, powerful forces that had been the declared aim ever since Crocodiles.

"'Do It Clean' is the first song I wrote after 'Crocodiles'. I'd drop the guitar out in the second chorus and slip in stuff like 'Fly Me To The Moon' and 'Girl From Ipanema'. It's something that's been copied by a lot of people. Bono!" (Ian McCulloch, from the interview mentioned above).
The Bunnymen's singer has always felt a certain rivalry toward the U2 frontman, perhaps spurred by the mass success achieved by a man he had previously — and rightly — considered his equal.
In 1984, driven by this healthy (so to speak) competitive spirit, Echo & The Bunnymen went to Paris to record what, in their own words, would be "the greatest album of all time". "We advertised the album as the greatest of all time because we thought it was. Sometimes I introduce 'The Killing Moon' as the most beautiful song ever written. And I really believe it" (from the liner notes of the 2003 reissue of Ocean Rain).
The logic is flawless, but "The Killing Moon" really is a great song. According to legend (spread by McCulloch himself, of course), Ian McCulloch supposedly dreamed its chorus, sung by none other than Frank Sinatra. The track is a soft, dreamlike ballad that opens with the slow but inexorable tread of bass and acoustic guitar, before opening up into a romantic crescendo on the famous chorus “fate up against your will/ through the thick and thin/ he will wait until/ you’ll give yourself to him” belted out by McCulloch at the top of his lungs. Sergeant contributes decisively to the enchantment, entering the track twice with what amount to full-blown solos, the second of which, unleashed in the final climax, turns the song into an Eighties "Stairway To Heaven". It's one of the decade's most emblematic tracks and, rightly or wrongly, the one for which the band will be remembered by the wider public.
"The Killing Moon" is, however, only the calling card of an album, Ocean Rain, destined to stand out within British rock for its sheer singularity. Wanting to reach a wider audience, the Bunnymen didn't take the easiest path, made of booming sounds and glossy electronics, but instead went essentially in the opposite direction: they made an almost entirely acoustic record, dominated by the sound of a full orchestra's strings. Add to this innovation the new "crooner" style the singer already displayed on "The Killing Moon", and you can say you're a long way from new wave, even though some typical elements persist, such as the prominent bass and, generally, a certain underlying melancholy.
Everything is made clear from the opening "Silver": the rather lively rhythm is carried by bass and acoustic guitar, Sergeant contributes brief riffs and a solo, while the voice and the lively flourishes of the strings soar above it all. The mood is luminous, and it almost feels like watching McCulloch leaning over the bow of the Bunnymen's ship, facing into the sun and silver spray, in a seafaring-novel epic. The concept is reinforced by the charming symphonic-pop ditties of "Crystal Days", with a magical Sergeant riff running freely through the verse, and "Seven Seas", with the album's most joyful chorus. Forced to converse with an entire orchestra, Sergeant still manages to carve out moments in the spotlight, as shown too by the almost destabilising solo with which he upends the fragile "My Kingdom".
Giving the album greater weight, meanwhile, is the melodrama of "Nocturnal Me", where the strings turn menacing, following the martial rhythm set by De Freitas. McCulloch proves at ease even within the context of such a heavily arranged track, showing, besides an evident passion for Scott Walker-style moods, a charisma that makes him the album's true protagonist. The only moment where the electric guitars return is the free-form litany of "Thorn Of Crowns", in which Sergeant puts to use the psychedelic apprenticeship of the previous album in service of the singer's Morrison-esque theatrics. Far more effective, though, is the latter's performance in the grand finale of "Ocean Rain", where the voice begins practically surrounded by silence, before rising through the emphatic crescendo of the strings up to the full-throated climax of "screaming beneath the waves".
The album is McCulloch's great triumph, one in which he manages, even lyrically, to create a new world of fantasy, somewhere between the surreal and the hyper-romantic, where one becomes a child again in order to sail the endless waves of an immense crystal sea.

Although "The Killing Moon" was a Top 20 hit, the album didn't achieve the fame it deserved. The band subsequently fell into crisis, declaring sabbatical years and attempting improbable back-to-basics returns with cover-only sets at Liverpool's Monro pub. The problem was that the band was reluctant to play by the rules of the market, according to which there's nothing to do but keep expanding your audience. Beloved in Europe, especially in France and Scandinavia (where they toured extensively), they didn't have the drive to take on the US. Here's what Will Sergeant had to say about it: "I hated being away for more than three weeks: between us there was nothing but icy silences. The atmosphere was hellish. Some people have the knack for being on the road, like U2, but they're Irish. They've got that wandering-gypsy mentality. We couldn't have done it in a million years".

In 1985 Bob Geldof invited Echo & The Bunnymen to the worldwide televised Live Aid charity mega-concert, but they turned it down. U2, needless to say, went instead, rising to global fame. That same year the Bunnymen recorded the romantic single "Bring On The Dancing Horses", released the compilation "Songs To Learn And Sing", and lost Pete De Freitas.
Having retrieved the runaway drummer, the four recorded their "Grey Album" (at least judging by the cover), titled simply Echo & The Bunnymen. The record features a collaboration with Ray Manzarek, who plays his unmistakable keyboards on the Doors-esque "Bedbugs And Ballyhoo".
Aside from this episode, though, the rest of the record shows a worrying regression, or rather a drift toward conformity, already hinted at in "Bring On The Dancing Horses". The lopsided, psychedelic sound has vanished, giving way to a flat, glossy production, for what are simply straightforward pop-rock radio songs. The singer himself seems decidedly muted, confined to a confidential, intimate register.
The shift pays off, giving the band the major hit single "Lips Like Sugar", blessed with celestial sounds courtesy of Sergeant and yet another anthemic, choral refrain, in what sounds like a commercial-key translation of Ocean Rain's romanticism. The rest of the record alternates pleasant mid-tempos ("The Game"), piano refrains of the kind Coldplay would later love ("Over You"), bursts of mild aggression ("All In Your Mind"), and glittering little guitar parts ("Bombers Bay"), combining with various radio-friendly sounds carefully avoided until now, to create a riot of sentimental mush.

For the band, it's the end: De Freitas dies in a motorcycle accident. McCulloch releases his first solo album, Candleland (1989, featuring guest Elizabeth Fraser), the first of a series that would also produce Mysterio in 1992 and Slideling in 2004, featuring Coldplay singer Chris Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland as guests.
Sergeant has the nerve to release an album under the name Echo & The Bunnymen, Reverberation (1990), with some unknown standing in for McCulloch.

Despite all this, singer and guitarist reunited in 1995 in the Electrafixion project (with the album Burned), the prelude to the Bunnymen's Nineties comeback.
Paradoxically, in an England that mocked the old Eighties winners (The Cure, Simple Minds, even U2) and fed only on techno and Britpop, Echo & The Bunnymen didn't seem so out of place. After all, they'd drunk from the same Sixties wells that Oasis were now drawing from, McCulloch had been imitating Bowie long before Brett Anderson did, and he had a big mouth that made him likeable, so why not?

That's how Evergreen, in 1997, ended up with backing vocals courtesy of Liam Gallagher (uncredited, though) on the track "Nothing Lasts Forever".
The cover, by all accounts, is a parody of Crocodiles's: they're still "lost in the woods", only this time, instead of the floppy-fringe look, there are those black sunglasses (worn at night) that seem to be the standard uniform for Eighties veterans in the following decade. In place of poor De Freitas there's a big vintage car.
The album is a collection of pop-rock ballads with an ultra-melodic cut, where the only signs pointing back to the old band are McCulloch's voice and Sergeant's contributions, which are, however, quite restrained. Otherwise, judging by the sound and production, it could be the record of just about any band from the Britpop wave.
In the pair's performance, though, there's an ease and naturalness that redeem the less-than-memorable material: Sergeant lands his trademark flourishes on tracks like "I Want To Be There (When You Come)", "Evergreen", "Baseball Bill", "Altamont", the tracks with the most bite. McCulloch, for his part, dispenses a series of nostalgic melodies over the guitar pop of "Don't Let It Get You Down" and over orchestral ballads like "I'll Fly Tonight" and "Nothing Lasts Forever", which features the London Metropolitan Orchestra.
The level of schmaltz is very high, and the singer's confidential, mature-man tone can at times come across as cloying. The addition of the orchestra doesn't make the same impact it did thirteen years earlier, given that it's used in a fairly conventional way and that, by the Nineties, such sounds were fairly widespread: that same year, 1997, The Verve scored a huge hit with the string motif of "Bittersweet Symphony", while the following year Mercury Rev would unveil the symphonic-pop masterpiece "Deserter's Songs". In truth, Sergeant saves his experimental ambitions for the Glide project, so the band's comeback seems to follow a decidedly mainstream vein. Still, it's an honest return, one that doesn't try too hard but aims to settle smoothly into the reality of the Nineties.

What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? followed in 1999 and Flowers in 2001, continuing in the wake of Evergreen, but with the sound progressively drying out.

In the 2000s came the new wave revival, and Echo & The Bunnymen (reduced to a duo after Pattinson's defection back in the days of Flowers) were ready to be rediscovered once again.
Siberia, from 2005, follows a fairly similar blueprint to the previous records: it's still all about ballads. The sound, though, has gained some bite thanks to the decision to rein in the acoustic guitars, push the bass to the fore, and give free rein to Will Sergeant's electric guitar. The lush orchestration of Evergreen no longer suits the new decade, and the band benefits from the change. The result is the energetic "Stormy Weather", "Scissors In The Sand", "Of A Life" and "Siberia".
The rest remains fairly saccharine, but there's no denying that McCulloch has kept his knack for writing melodies that stick in your head. In that same 2004 interview, the singer stated: "Once, when we had to make an album, I'd write ten songs. We'd start playing and I'd then add my vocal parts on top of their melodies. Now I know how to write melodies myself".

For Slideling, his 2003 solo album, McCulloch gets a hand from Chris Martin and Johnny Buckland of Coldplay, self-declared Echo & The Bunnymen fans - so much so that they claimed they wanted "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" to be their own "Ocean Rain", and even asked to borrow McCulloch's famous raincoat for the "In My Place" video.

Meanwhile, the Bunnymen's discography gains two live albums, Live in Liverpool (from the Flowers tour) and Me I'm All Smiles (from the Siberia tour), proof of what the real business is for reunited bands: concerts and festival appearances.

In 2008 the band staged a major show at the Royal Albert Hall, where they performed the Ocean Rain album in full - an album recently given a lavish "deluxe" reissue featuring the entire historic 1983 London concert, released in full on compact disc for the very first time.
Never as much as in this last decade, finally, have so many compilations dedicated to them been released.

So McCulloch and Sergeant try again with a new album, The Fountain (2009), which was meant to mark their return to Warner but instead became the first release on the small Ocean Rain label. That's not the only novelty. The producer changes too, this time it's John McLaughlin, a man who has worked alongside pop acts about as pop as it gets: Busted, Worlds Apart, 911, 5ive and Westlife. A world about as far removed as possible, in short, from that of Echo And The Bunnymen.
And yet the result is decent, the sound is at times updated just enough to have a certain appeal. The first single alone, "Think I'll Need It Too", did well in England despite being built on a handful of predictable chords and having a rather bland chorus (“Qualsiasi cosa tu voglia/ qualsiasi cosa di cui tu abbia bisogno/ penso di averne bisogno anch’io”). Almost a new "The Game" reimagined as if recorded by Snow Patrol. Elsewhere Coldplay come to mind, especially on "Forgotten Fields", or certain more recent New Order moments ("Do You Know Who I Am?", one of their sunniest songs ever, and "Shroud Of Time").
"Life Of 1,000 Crimes" is another of the lightest songs in their catalogue, this time winking at some of the hits of recent years (from Hard Fi to the Kooks). Chris Martin guests on the title track: solid and tastefully arranged. "Everlasting Neverendless", on the other hand, is rather anonymous; "Proxy" sounds like a curious hybrid of the Dandy Warhols and David Bowie's "Suffragette City". "Drivetime" lacks a memorable chorus, but redeems itself through the quality of the arrangement. McCulloch has said he's proud of the closing "The Idolness Of Gods", a ballad finally inspired lyrically too, though here it's the piano, rather than Will Sergeant's guitar, that stands out.

The Fountain is not their best record since the melancholy What Are You Going To Do With Your Life, nor since Ocean Rain, as leader Ian McCulloch has been quick to claim in interviews these days. It's a dignified work, as is perhaps fair to expect from a band with thirty years of career behind it - albeit interrupted for years and marked by various line-up changes, at times made unavoidable by tragic events. It doesn't move you the way their past albums did, and on the whole form prevails over substance, but nor is it a desperate attempt to keep up with the times by pandering to the crassest trends.

Five years later, the celebrated McCulloch-Sergeant partnership (now joined by guitarist Gordy Goudie and bassist Stephen Brennan) returns with a new album, produced by Youth, bassist of Killing Joke. Meteorites (2014) - the frontman promises - is "what Echo & The Bunnymen should be: untouchable, celestial, beautiful and real. This record changed my life". Reality, however, is a bit more prosaic: now trapped in an unshakeable bond with Coldplay, the Liverpool band can no longer stamp its shadowy, romantic mark on pop-rock numbers that, however well-crafted, feel rather sterile. Material of average-to-mediocre quality, for a top talent like McCulloch, who nonetheless touts the record as a solo work of his released under the Bunnymen banner.
What shines brightest are above all the melodic openings of "Lovers On The Run" and of the title track itself. Elsewhere, it's mostly pretentiousness that sinks experiments like "Is This A Breakdown", "Grapes Upon The Vine" and the endless "Market Town" (nearly eight minutes of danceable rhythms).
All in all, one of the weakest works since the band got back on its feet in 1997.

Echo & The Bunnymen's reunion may not have set the world on fire, but if the goal was to keep playing and writing songs with dignity and honesty, it can be said to have been amply achieved. That "if", however, is unavoidable, since the suspicion that the singer still secretly aspired to world domination has never quite gone away. On that front McCulloch has failed, and what's more, Bono and U2, after all these years, are still right where they were.
But as long as there are people like him in the UK, seriously convinced they can write "the greatest album of all time", one thing is certain: English rock will never die.

After a long twelve-year recording silence, broken only by the release of an album of orchestral reworkings of their songs, The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon, Echo & The Bunnymen release a new album of original material in 2026. Apples For Isaac sees Ian McCulloch take on almost the entire songwriting role, well aware that he can count on the support of a solid band. The ever-reliable Will Sergeant shares six-string duties here with Peter Riley, while the rhythm section and keyboards are entrusted to new blood: bassist Stephen Brannan, keyboardist Mike Smith and drummer Clem Burke (formerly of Blondie), the latter having sadly passed away shortly before the recordings were completed, and to whose memory the album is dedicated.
The shift in tone is clear: Echo & The Bunnymen leave behind the orchestral grandiosity of an uninspired work like Meteorites. What doesn't change is McCulloch's leadership: Apples For Isaac is, after all, yet another thinly-disguised solo album, touted as ever by the musician as the best thing he's done since Ocean Rain. And that's exactly the mantra echoing through the reviews and fan comments. It took just the opening notes of the single "Brussels Is Haunted" to recapture the euphoric lightness of their early days. But the lead track isn't the only song set to boost the band's standing: there's everything from the rock-blues of "Hijacked" to the elegant new-wave decadence of "The Light That Surrounds You", all the way to the melancholy magic of the solemn "An Unstoppable Force". The winning card of Apples For Isaac lies in having restored the energy and shine of the golden years without forcing the nostalgia angle. So it is that after yet another nod to David Bowie ("I'll Be Your Sunshine"), the band follows up with a lively rock'n'roll number spiced up with sax ("Lab Rats Ran"), or sets the Madchester-style funky textures of "Take Me By The Hand" against the stately sound of "We Prayed In The Dark". It's all carried along by a verve and brio that comes through even on the less memorable tracks ("Honey" and "Asimov"). Lean and not without melodic flashes, "Apples For Isaac" is a record that restores to the band some of the dignity and strength of its past, though few moments can really stand up to comparison with it. Ian McCulloch's voice has lost some of the ambiguous charm of his early days, replaced by an emotional vulnerability that at times draws a smile and, perhaps, even a furtive tear, but the comparison with the past risks tempering fans' understandable enthusiasm: in the end, Apples For Isaac is Ian McCulloch's best solo album.

Contributions by Alessandro Liccardo ("The Fountain"), Gianfranco Marmoro ("Apples For Isaac")

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google