Songs to Learn and Live In: A Preview of Echo & the Bunnymen (2024)

Smoke swirls.
Up from just below the microphone.
Ascending trajectory toward the light above.
Black sunglasses and tousled hair.
Cigarette.
Silhouette.
Atmospheric harpsichord guitar.
The chanteur howls.
Thick warm sounds
Surround.
Comfort and.

For forty-three years or so, Echo & the Bunnymen have presented as much a feeling as a sound. Fashioned out of the Liverpool punk scene, their psychedelic, chilling, haunting and often propulsive sounds have served a decades-long soundtrack. For many Chicagoans of a range of ages, “The Killing Moon” or “Lips Like Sugar” evoke memories of following a call to action on the dark dance floor of Neo or smartbar. An immersive multi-dimensional embrace knowing that you are unique, but among strangers. Sharing something with those strangers, though that something may only consist of that time, that place, that music, that knowledge and that comfort—the moment of shared experience.

As mainstream as Echo & The Bunnymen may sound today, when they first came into being, their goal was to not be punk or even rock ‘n’ roll. Singer/lyricist Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant founded the band, initially jamming with a drum machine, trying to capture and eschew pieces of garage, glam, psychedelia and punk. Sergeant liked the Doors, Them and the Velvet Underground and then punk came along. The band members experienced all of the first wave of punk, and they openly pay tribute to some of these influences, continuing to include the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” or a Velvet Underground song in homage to Jim Morrison and Lou Reed in their shows. On this tour, the band has even segued into Bowie’s “Jean Genie” and Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour.”

McCulloch has always embodied a brash, independent, “don’t give a sh*t” punk ethos like one of his heroes, Mark E. Smith of The Fall, while maintaining some form of a groove. He has declared that he created the greatest song ever written—”The Killing Moon”—and like a wrestler asserts that Echo and the Bunnymen is the best band in the world. When “Crocodiles” was released in 1980 the music looked backward with mashed 1-3 chorded guitars lifted from the Thirteenth Floor Elevators and lyrics with drug-use references from the Velvets in “Do It Clean.” Yet their sound also contained a reinvented depth not present in the punk sound that was a precursor to much of what is now considered “eighties” music would become. As Sergeant remembers “[t]he term post-punk hadn’t been invented at the time so no one knew what to call us. We were called post-modernist for a while, then long overcoat music, then neo-psychedelia. We had loads of stupid titles. Nowadays, people think we’re goth!”

At some point, McCulloch found his imagery from sailing on the open sea and romance. Somehow, the dark sound, positive image of dark skies, the ocean, romance and atmospheric guitar merged in a kind of “goth-lite” which has helped them become even more popular today than when they started out.

The current tour comes a long way from their first visit to Tut’s on April 12, 1981. Based on set lists, it looks like the band is revisiting virtually all of its repertoire, so you expect to hear every one of their hits. Though, to be fair, it is unlikely to be a Vegas/Broadway simulacrum performance—it will be real, with some variations and extemporaneous bursts or muttering from McCulloch as well as excursions into lesser-known songs and/or some of the covers noted above. Ian’s voice has always been gruff, and at sixty-four, he has been a high-volume cigarette smoker for decades. He has acknowledged his voice can go, due to the smoking, not the singing. To give his voice (and maybe the audience, too) a rest, on the current tour, the band has been doing two sets. He might not be able to hit the high notes of a “Lips Like Sugar,” but with a large part of the audience blaring along you might not notice—especially if you are capturing your moment and are singing too.

Echo & the Bunnymen will perform at Riviera Theatre, 4746 North Racine, on Sunday, May 26. Doors at 6pm; show at 7:30pm. Via Mardot opens. Tickets here.