Ian McCulloch and his Echo & the Bunnymen brethren cast a sonorous shadow over a packed and intimate performance at Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge on a chilly Saturday night to a crowd of lifelong fans and industry folks grateful for a cheek-to-cheek with the post-punk legends. Ever full of swagger and always the sharpest wit in any room he’s in, McCulloch and longtime musical partner Will Sergeant put on a swoony, master class tour-de-force performance, barreling through classic Bunnymen cuts “Rescue,” “The Cutter,” “Back of Love,” “Seven Seas,” “Bring on the Dancing Horses” and “Killing Moon” all the while suffering from the “bus flu” and entertaining myriad bizarro quips from the impassioned (and inebriated) audience.
The centerpiece of the action, of course, begins and ends with McCulloch. Behind the shades, wool trench, sneering snark, rambling non sequiturs and detached cool, the 50-year-old Liverpudlian is, and has always been, an ace raconteur and bard of baroque prone to hilariously caustic off-handed comments, ranging from, “Anyone from France here?” (No, there wasn’t) “Well, Thank God for that!” to “Shush? I tell people when to shush!” and the fascinatingly random, “Is Billy Crystal here?” and “Anyone here with the Christian name, Rabaldo?” He doesn’t explain, and the crowd doesn’t complain.
Preferring to stick to older, well-trod material off of 1980’s Crocodiles, 1983’s Porcupine, 1984’s Ocean Rain over heavily previewing standout tracks from their upcoming eleventh studio album, The Fountain, the Bunnymen managed to expertly fit in two new songs that already sound like classic fare, “Forgotten Fields” and new single “Think I Need It Too,” with McCulloch already referring to the latter as “a classic tune.”
Let it be known that the famously raspy croon has, improbably, aged finer than a deep-barrel bourbon. And as McCulloch lit a Marlboro Red, remarking that smoking is “the new medicaysh-yeown,” before launching into an epically romantic “Killing Moon,” and raucous take on “The Cutter,” what could have been a standard black-celebration night of nostalgia for a once superstar band looking to break bad and big again with their perfect blend of storm clouds, lonely harbors and lush punk-psychedelica, became far more than just another drop in the restless ocean. It was a knives-out, full-throttle, battle-worn victory.
“Lips Like Sugar,” the planned but aborted encore wasn’t even missed. We’ll let that old girl glide across the water a little longer if it allows Echo & the Bunnymen to reintroduce themselves without the feather and saccharin of the necessary pop hit in lieu of lighting up the deeper corners and darker shores and forgotten fields that they would rather, and perhaps more happily, explore. –Carrie Alison, Photos by Carrie Alison
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