| 25 YEARS AND COUNTING |
| Echo and the Bunnymen play on |
By Michael Sandlin
In the late ’80s, if you attended an overcrowded, white-trashy public high school like mine (in Texas), you knew that any overt admittance of enjoying a band like Echo and the Bunnymen could bring you pain. In the pre-Nirvana age, “alternative” music was often associated with “alternative” lifestyles: Even liking The Cars could get you labeled a “weirdo” or “homo.” As if caught in a bad film co-directed by Penelope Spheeris and John Hughes, campus New Wavers stoically absorbed daily doses of harassment from the mullet-topped offspring of Nixon’s “silent majority”: bluejean-jacketed dudes whose Blaupunkt-equipped, bondo-covered Ford pickups vibrated with the sounds of ZZ Top and Sammy-era Halen.
However, if you had an ear bent to American commercial radio in the fall of 1987, you might’ve noticed it was a rare season in the sun for “120 Minutes”-watching types. First, REM’s “The One I Love” went Top 10. Then, jostling for airtime with Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” and Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar” was the diamond-like dream-pop of “Lips Like Sugar.” It was the most radio-friendly single from Echo and the Bunnymen’s eponymous 1987 album, which peaked on Billboard at No. 51. As punishment, New Wavers took many a desert-boot in the ass that semester. And worse, singer Ian McCulloch soon broke from the Bunnymen to work on a solo album.
Apart from their wimpy sounding name, Echo and the Bunnymen betrayed some very masculine primary influences—Television and the Doors (remember Echo’s stellar cover of “People Are Strange” on the Lost Boys soundtrack). And in a sense, the second-best band in Liverpool history hasn’t come a long way since their Ian Broudie–produced “Rescue” pierced the UK charts in 1980. Thankfully, they’ve kept their core sound amazingly consistent over the last 25 years. On 2005’s excellent Siberia, guitarist Will Sergeant, the Thatcher-era anti-Yngwie, still writes inventive, clean-cut lines as unobtrusive as they are insidiously catchy. McCulloch’s vocals now settle coolly and comfortably into the mix, as his delivery is rarely as desperately emotive as on earlier Crocodiles-era material.
True, the days of suckling at Sire’s robust teat are long over. The American pop charts, and thus big labels, have cashiered “alternative” bands that don’t play empty irony-rock like Weezer or Fountains of Wayne. In recent years, however, Echo has found a sympathetic ear in the UK-based Cooking Vinyl label, joining other major label castoffs like Camper Van Beethoven, The Church and The Buzzcocks.
Like the Cure, Echo are known for their consistently crystalline live sound. And certainly this upcoming Irving Plaza show will be a perfect opportunity for thirty-somethings to reminisce over the school parking lot beatings they received when caught with Songs to Learn and Sing. Youngsters, on the other hand, can find out where The Stills and Interpol ripped their styles from. They may even take the hint that “The Killing Moon” isn’t a Steve Malkmus song after all.
July 1. Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. (at 15th St.), 212-777-1224; 8, $25/$30.
| Volume 19, Issue 26
©2006 All rights reserved.
No part of this website may be reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. |
|
|
