new introductory bit here.
This is a reviews page based on my own collection, which just keeps growing despite itself. If it isn't listed here, it's because I don't own it yet, or I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Also, bother your local "new rock" radio station and make sure they are playing "new rock" and not "Rock the Casbah," which is not new.
note: entries in red text indicate my pick for the artist's best available album. A gold numeral indicates the POPocalypse winner of the year's best album; second- and third-place winners are in blue. Green lettering indicates an obviously exploitative record company compilation without apparent artist input.
The Bunnymen have been among the most fascinating and unforgettable of chart acts since their formation in Liverpool in 1979. Frontman Ian McCulloch, formerly in the post-punk trio The Crucial Three with Julian Cope and Pete Wylie, proved to be one of the 80s' most entertaining frontmen, matching his enigmatic and bizarre visual style with an endless series of attacks on his fellow pop acts, especially the ones like Jim Kerr and Bono who dared court American popularity. The Bunnymen have never courted anyone's popularity. That would have been uncool.
Coolness was an important key to the Bunnymen's earliest success. Once McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bassist Les Pattinson dispatched with their drum machine "Echo" and hired Pete DeFreitas as their drummer, they became renowned for powerful, shambling live shows in which McCulloch would break away from the song in progress to start adlibbing old Doors or Stones tunes. Washed in shadow and wearing long trenchcoats, they were the Liverpudlian counterpoint to Manchester's Joy Division.
Their first single, "Pictures on My Wall," went nowhere, and the second, the perfectly chiming "Rescue," only made the top 70 in 1980. The debut album Crocodiles, released later that year, made the top 20. Full of dense rhythms and raw, moody songs about animals and drugs, the album sold briskly in universities and on the continent, although the American distributors at Sire didn't have a clue what to do with it.
1981's Heaven Up Here proved more successful, peaking at #10 in the UK and hitting the low ends of the Billboard 200 on the back of an American club tour and airplay on the nascent college radio circuit. It contained the beautiful single "A Promise," which still couldn't get much play back home and missed the UK top 40, but their live reputation, coupled with McCulloch's reliability for great copy in the music papers, guaranteed lots of press, which would pay off hugely in the next couple of years.
The Bunnymen spent 1982 continuing to build their reputation, and broke into the top 20 singles chart for the first time with "The Back of Love" in the summer. It was included on 1983's Porcupine, which some critics today consider the weakest of their first four albums. It was recorded while the band members were beginning to stress each other out and this paranoia is evident in the music. Nevertheless, the album was their biggest hit at #2, and spawned their first top 10 single, "The Cutter." The very commercial and upbeat "Never Stop" followed it into the top 20 in the summer as the band played an important date at the Royal Albert Hall. They were the first rock act to play there in a decade; allegedly, the venue had banned rock acts after Mott the Hoople trashed it in 1973. (Amusingly, Siouxsie & the Banshees brought a too-boisterous crowd later the same year and the venue reconsidered their earlier policy, banning rock acts for at least another six years.)
After promoting "Never Stop," the band spent several months recording their masterpiece Ocean Rain. It was preceded by the mood-filled epic "The Killing Moon," another top 10 single, and then by advertisements which flatly called their new work "the greatest album ever made." The critics went to town on McCulloch's arrogance and cheek, but few could deny the band hadn't left much room for argument. Ocean Rain is truly fantastic, a sweeping epic of misery and mood, mixing guitars that are simultaneously oppressive and chiming with soaring string arrangements. A university experience is incomplete without it.
From a zenith like this, a tumble was inevitable, but the band, recognizing the British media's tenacity for attacking the acts they had once praised as soon as they clicked with the public, tried to forestall it. After taking a few months of 1985 off, they toured small clubs in Europe before headlining the Glastonbury Festival to much acclaim. Later in the year, they released the single "Bring on the Dancing Horses" (#21, 1985) and the singles collection Songs to Learn and Sing. Then they took another vacation while Pete De Freitas took an extended and unplanned tour of America with a lot of wildly carousing buddies calling themselves the Sex Gods. When he returned to England in the late spring of 1986, he was allegedly penniless, and his sudden absence caused newfound friction in the band. The Bunnymen recorded a new record that summer, but then shelved it, unhappy as they were with the results.
Only one of the 1986 songs made it onto the eventual Echo & The Bunnymen, which came out amid much hoopla in the summer of 1987. The album was previewed with the lanquid single "The Game" and a traffic-stopping performance on the roof of an HMV record store in London and made the top five, but reviews were decidedly mixed. The production by Laurie Latham (best known for keeping any bumps or angles from appearing in material by Nik Kershaw or Paul Young) is far too smooth and commercial for the material. It's middle-of-the-road radio friendly, and as much as fans and 80s college radio listeners loved the lovable "Lips Like Sugar," there truly isn't anything unique or "alternative" about it. Even the album's music videos were dull and dreary; unimaginative performance clips of the band playing in warehouses.
Echo & The Bunnymen was the band's most successful album in America, just missing the top 50. It was packaged in a grey sleeve with a moody photo by Anton Corbijn, whose very similar shot of U2 adorned the cover of The Joshua Tree a few months later. Comparison to the similarly commercial new U2 album infuriated the band, who suddenly had to bear the same critical attack the press were aiming at U2 for selling out to America. In retrospect, it was not a good time for their cover of "People are Strange" (featuring the Doors' Ray Manzarek) to appear on the hit soundtrack to The Lost Boys. The final blow came when McCulloch's father, his biggest fan, died in 1988. With that, McCulloch quit, but the remaining three announced plans to continue without him.
Tragically, those plans were dashed when Pete DeFreitas was killed in a motorcycle accident in June of 1989. The Bunnymen had already been rehearsing with Noel Burke, formerly of St. Vitus Dance, on vocals and periodic live guitarist Jake Brockman promoted to full-time status. Some months later, Damon Reece replaced the late DeFreitas and the quintet began recording 1990's Reverberation. McCulloch had already beaten them to the record racks with his solo debut, but hadn't managed a top 40 single, so there was some speculation that the Bunnymen would succeed without him.
Reverberation, produced by Liverpool's Geoff Emerick (best known for his production/engineering work with the Beatles and some of their other Apple acts), is a very listenable and psychedelic record. With its emphasis on a prominent guitar, it is sonically superior to Echo & The Bunnymen, and Burke is a perfectly good vocalist, but the material is too different to easily fit into the existing body of work. Most of the band's followers ignored the album, questioning how a band with only two original members and three replacements could use the original name. McCulloch didn't help matters, chiding his former mates in print as either "Echoes of the Bunnymen" or "Echo and the Bogusmen."
The album and its single "Enlighten Me" failed to chart, and WEA dropped the band. Undaunted, they continued touring and issued a pair of singles on their own indie label: "Prove Me Wrong" in 1991 and "Inside Me, Inside You" in 1992. But the law of diminishing returns set in and, without a single chart dent, the Bunnymen disbanded late in 1992. Three years later, Griffin Music licensed "Pictures on My Wall," the band's original two-song single from Zoo, and gave it a simple CD reissue which used the original sleeve artwork.
Meanwhile, McCulloch's solo career had been proceeding without much popular success either, and had not registered any top 40 material. Following an aborted 1993 teamup with ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, McCulloch patched his differences with Will Sergeant. Teamed with Leon De Sylva as the trio Electrafixion, they were active for about 18 months touring and promoting the minor hit album Burned. One of the singles, 1996's "Sister Pain," had made the top 30, the biggest hit for either Bunnyman in eight years.
In 1997, they had coaxed Les Pattinson back into the warren, resurrecting the old band name and adding session drummer Michael Lee, and their low-key reunion single "Nothing Lasts Forever" was released. A sweeping, string-laden anthem, it owed much to the sound of Ocean Rain, but with a hint of Oasis's better material as well, and was a top 10 smash. The album Evergreen followed it into the top 10 that summer, and was very well-received by the media, who, with the vociferous exception of the USA's Details magazine, compared it favorably to the band's first four records and considered it one of the most dignified comebacks a defunct band had ever managed. In the USA, the album was an unpromoted flop which couldn't even find college radio support. While most magazines gave it a brief and thoughtful thumbs-up, the most press it got was from Details, which treated it as a running gag for months.
A well-received tour followed, along with another pair of singles which charted mildly, before the band fractured again. A death in his family prompted Pattinson to retire from the music industry during sessions for their seventh album, What are You Going to Do With Your Life?, which was released in 1999. Michael Lee drummed on two of the songs but was otherwise replaced by Jeremy Stacey, while Guy Pratt subbed for Pattinson. The album is sedate and quiet, contemplative and deliberate. It's not a showcase for Sergeant's blistering chords; strings and atmosphere is the key to this album. The tone is more adult and knowing, and some fans found it too much a change of pace. It is a remarkable achievement, but also revealing for what it lacks; the US single "Get in the Car" would have benefitted from a more direct Sergeant attack.
Life was preluded with another "Forever"-styled single, the epic anthem "Rust," which borrowed the chorus from a seven year-old McCulloch B-side. The trick was good enough for another top 30 hit, but the album could barely follow it higher up the album chart. London Records, dealing with considerable internal turmoil at the time, dropped the Bunnymen. Considering it took the band four years to make the top 20 in the first place, it seems a little odd that London would drop them over chart positions as "low" as #21 and #22.
The Bunnymen had a quiet 2000 and released some new songs through their website before settling on indie label Cooking Vinyl and recording the Flowers LP with the addition of three new sessioners to fill their ranks: Vincent Jamieson on drums, Ceri James on keyboards and Alex Germains on bass. Flowers, released worldwide in 2001, returned to the prominent strong guitar chords of Evergreen. McCulloch's voice is becoming increasingly reedy through the years, but the opening line "I met Jesus on a hill" indicates his lyrics are just as grandiose as ever. "It's Alright" and "Make Me Shine" were drawn as singles, but Cooking Vinyl couldn't get the music in the hands of enough media or buyers to push any of it into the top 40. Nevertheless, it's equally as strong as the rest of their catalog and shows that, artistically, their comeback has been a valid one.
The Bunnymen spent 2001 touring the world with Steve Flett replacing Alex Germains, often with the support of the Rosenbergs and also in a dual-headlining series of shows with the Psychedelic Furs. The following year's Live in Liverpool features material from two August shows at the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, and sees the band in good form, despite some arguably weary vocals from McCulloch. (5/02)
ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN: BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert (1991, ***)
This 1991 release captures the band's original lineup on their last tour for a triumphant hometown show at the Liverpool Empire Theater, January 11 1988. Ian is falling down around every song, tearing through the lyrics with the energy of a desperate, dying man. The band slips into such songs as "Besame Mucho" and "Light My Fire" before returning to the song they started with, and the enthusiastic crowd amusingly keeps calling for classic tracks that the band don't get around to playing. Wish I'd been at this show, actually...
ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN: 688 (Atlanta 10/10/81, unlabelled)
A double-disc audience recording of the band ripping up The 688 Club on a great US tour which saw the band building their fan base at college radio. Good sound, good performance, and an amusing faux-Peter Saville sleeve.