I used to really like Echo & The Bunnymen back in the eighties. But I also used to get really frustrated with them.
What first drew me to this band was early records like Heaven Up Here and Porcupine. The overall mood on these albums was mostly one of doom and darkness, but it was always balanced by songs that rocked. On songs like "All My Colours," "Over The Wall," and "Higher Hell," lead vocalist Ian McCullough would drone his way through the doomy lyrics, while Will Sergeant's guitar cut through the din like shards of glass.
Mostly though, these songs — almost always written and played with dark sounding minor chords at the forefront — put a more modern spin on the long since forgotten psychedelic excursions of sixties bands like the Doors. McCullough's voice and mysterious stage persona were even compared to Jim Morrison back then.
However, as the band later gained popularity through MTV videos and airplay on "modern rock" radio, the music increasingly took on more of a pop sheen. This was epitomized by the late eighties hit "Lips Like Sugar." There were still occasional flashes of the darker beauty of the earlier Bunnymen on some of the latter eighties albums — most notably on songs like "The Killing Moon" and "Thorn Of Crowns" from the brilliant Ocean Rain album.
But you could see that Echo & The Bunnymen were rapidly developing something of a split musical personality. One which would eventually cause the band to split up as McCullough attempted to parlay his MTV stardom into a solo career.
The video below for "Lips Like Sugar" is taken from Echo & The Bunnymen's great new live concert DVD Dancing Horses. Even though this concert was filmed as recently as two years ago, even here you can still see the band's musical duality at work:
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