Review – Echo & the Bunnymen

Edinburgh’s grand Usher Hall is the perfect venue for the orchestration of Ocean Rain, not only one of the finest albums of the 1980s, as the band tour shirt suggests, the best album of all time.

Before we get to the orchestrated set the Bunnymen play a selection of favourites starting with Going Up. The atmospheric opener swells through the audience with Will Sergeant stabbing out the riff while Mac in ever-present dark glasses stands tall and menacing while singing “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

The mood continues with All That Jazz and Rescue completing a trio of much-loved songs from the band’s 1980 album Crocodiles. A recorded version of Bedbugs and Ballyhoo featured Ray Manzarek and the song continues to recall early Doors. Mac encourages people to dance while the security asks fans to sit down. One fan angry fan shouts out amid the confusion.

Will Sergeant appears in a smart black suit when the 16-piece orchestra join the band after a short break for the Ocean Rain section. Silver is as grandiose as ever and fresh enough to make you believe it could have been created for this moment. The enchanted evening continues with a soaring Nocturnal Me, a song that has lost none of its mystery in the intervening years.

The Killing Moon is one of the band’s finest moments, brought to a new audience at various points such as when it was included in the soundtrack to Donnie Darko back in 2001. It’s a song out of time, that only gets better with each passing year. Lips Like Sugar, another soundtrack cut used in Pretty In Pink is a late set highlight. They close with a single released 40 years ago, The Cutter. Fusing Eastern sounds with Mac’s unsettling vocal it remains a shimmering post-punk classic.

Echo & the Bunnymen Usher Hall