Echo and the Bunnymen

The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, Friday 17th August 2001

It’s still being touted as a comeback for the Bunnymen, despite four albums and numerous tours since the comeback of 1997.

It was a novel experience for the Bunny clan, with Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute fame school chosen as the venue for the hometown gig on the current tour. LIPA was chosen for the recording of the Bunnymens first live album in their twenty-year history.

What the venue gained with regards to practicality for the recording process, you sensed that there was something lacking from the atmosphere and the performance of the band.

No doubt the end results will sound polished, but that’s not what it is about. With a set that comprised of the tried and trusted favourites such as the Cutter and the Killing Moon, as well as a smattering of songs from the bands impressive recent album Flowers. In the end it all sounded a little clinical, with little to distinguish between what was new and what was old.

Though as ever Over the Wall was impressive. With the song the spiralling away majestically, as per usual, with Will Sergeants, guitar sounding as it should for the one and only time of the night.

As a recording band the output is still as impressive as it has ever been. But something seems to be missing from the current band of hired hands augmenting the original members of Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant. Where the original line-up sounded otherworldly, the present sounds a little lumpen and a far cry from the Bunnymen of old.