DB's Song of the Day (day 126): "THE KILLING MOON" (1984) Echo & the Bunnymen

Echo & the Bunnymen’s 1984 album was their biggest, in the UK. In the States they never got no respect, it seems. Today’s song, “The Killing Moon,” from Ocean Rain (great title!) was their highest UK charter, in the Top Ten. That alone, I guess, would make it a good choice for vocalist/songwriter Ian McCulloch’s 55th birthday (which was May 5th). McCulloch has been quoted as saying that no other band (I’m talking to you, Bono!) has a song that can come near it. The song is one of the Bunnymen’s best and one of their best known.

The entire album, to me, is a very spring-like affair. Maybe because it was released on May 4th, originally, and I’m sure I bought it that very month, week maybe. Porcupine had convinced me to pay attention to these guys and Ocean Rain, I have to admit, disappointed me slightly. The lyrics were so clear! I was getting used to the murky lyrics of the day and there’s not much to scratch your head over on Ocean Rain. That said, I saw the title track, today’s song, and “Nocturnal Me” as some of the best things they’d done. “Silver” and “Crystal Days” were pretty terrific too.

So, all due tribute to Mr. McCulloch. And did you hear? He’s getting the band back together. Well, not really the band—drummer Pete de Freitas died in 1989 and I don’t think bassist Lee Pattinson is up for it this time ‘round (there have been revivals before).  But, in any case, if you “like” Echo & the Bunnymen on facebook you get updates in your feed telling you about Meteorites, the new Echo & the Bunnymen album which is out this month in UK and June in US. There have been a spate of “old home week” returns of late—Bob Mould’s got a new one, Camper van Beethoven too.  Cool.  We fifty-somethings got to stick together, sonny.

Anyway, when I used to make tapes for people—which I did a lot—songs from this album got good notices, especially with females. “The Killing Moon” has a sultry, coiled, ready-to-strike quality. It’s a bit, perhaps, like a long buildup to an orgasm—which does arrive at the end when McCulloch peaks on the great, oft-repeated line “fate up a-gaaaainst your will” and keeps it in a higher register for the whole chorus as though the pay-off of “his” wait has come (“He will wait until / You give yourself to him”). Those lines go ‘round and ‘round as though the song is actually wearing down “her” resistance.

Then he dives down into his lower register, relaying a sort of late-flowering menace. Like: told you so, you just lost it to him. What? Your innocence? Your very soul. Your so very prized self-possession? I guess it could be that kind of scenario.

Because it’s all so moonlight on the moors moody. Maybe that’s what’s wearing her down. Those strings keep things full of tension while lines like “So cruelly you kissed me / Your lips a magic world / Your sky all hung with jewels” give the song the ambiance of a Romance novel. “Too late to beg you or cancel it / Though I know it must be the killing time / Unwillingly mine.”

Which makes the opening seem like a very grudging surrender, and so he’s waiting for something a little more “fated,” shall we say. The song feels like a trance that keeps climbing, not letting you get out of it, only deeper into it. Until (maybe) at that peak when you (or she) realize that it is, though against your will, willed by fate.  Darkly romantic, we might say.

The song has aura to spare, and that’s what I loved about Bucko and the boys, they had such bombast. McCulloch no doubt takes himself a bit too seriously, but when this song came out we were both about 25. That’s a good age to get swept off your feet, isn’t it?  And it’s a song I still enjoy for its wonderful rendition of both the oppression of passion and the release of pent-up feelings via that “magic world.”

DB's Song of the Day (day 27):"THE CUTTER" (1983) Echo & The Bunnymen

Today’s song seems like it should go with winter.  I guess it’s because of the cover art of the LP Porcupine, of which it is the lead-off song, and because of the cover art of the 45 of the song and its video (link below), which was shot in Iceland. “The Cutter,” by Echo & The Bunnymen presents the band at what may be its best.  Leastways, in retrospect, I see Porcupine, from 1983, as their best LP.

I never got to see the band perform with their frontman Ian McCulloch, he of the wonderfully bombastic voice, and I’ve always regretted it. Echo’s run at the top of their form was relatively brief—1980-1984—which means that about the time I started going to rock shows again, they were heading into a caesura that meant no new album releases until Echo & The Bunnymen—which I always referred to as “Contractual Obligation”—in 1987. And anyway they were always bigger in the UK and not quite as likely to be found on these shores. They were upstaged by R.E.M., in my personal pantheon, and upstaged by Bono Vox and U2 in the grand scheme of things. I’m sure the latter state of affairs burned up the ambitious McCulloch to no end.

So I’ll just say I prefer Echo & Crew to U2, though they both released really good LPs in 1984. That was a good year for “hair bands” like Bucko, er, Echo. The Eighties were a time of coiffure affairs, of hair challenges given and received. I find it hard to look at the results quite often, but then I’m a Seventies creature, we’ve already established that.

“The Cutter,” with those sinuous strings cutting right in, is a great track, full of the rhythmic interest The Bunnymen bring to every song on this LP.  As an opening track, it soars. That refrain is like rocket propulsion: “Conquering myself until / I see another hurdle approaching / Say we can, say we will / Not just another drop in the ocean.” So empowering! (Have to admit, though, I always heard “another hell approaching,” heh.)

Let’s get that down anyway. I got into this LP and the Bunnies mostly starting in 1983, when this was the new release. That was the year I moved away from Philly back to dreary DE. My friend Tim, who had his ear to many of the new bands on the up-and-coming, played an epic reel-to-reel tape for me sometime during my last spring in the city, and it was laden with Bunny tracks. They made their inroads with me along with other bands who became fixtures, like Psychedelic Furs, The Cure, Bauhaus, New Order, and others that didn’t, like Tears for Fears. Just to put it all in context.  At the time, Porcupine had a slight edge on them all, partly because I liked McCulloch's voice so much, and partly because I was rarely sure what he was singing about, but it always sounded somber and poetic.

“What’s in the bottom drawer / Waiting for things to give?”  Beats me, but it’s probably lethal or potentially so. And I know that, in Brit parlance, “spare us the cutter” means “give us some bread” (money) as we would say, but I always chose to think of “The Cutter” as the big one: Atropos, the third of the Greek Fates, the one that cuts the thread of life.  So, y’know, though I’m “conquering” my urge to end it all (until I see another hell approaching) with whatever is in that bottom drawer, still, spare me the cutter. The other line “Couldn’t cut the mustard” pretty much sums up why he might want to be stepping out now. “We will escape our lives” (I knew it was either that or “we won’t escape our lies”—either way, he’s got the urge for going).

“Am I the happy loss”—I was reading a lot of Finnegans Wake in 1982-84 and there’s a recurring idea of “the happy fall” (felix culpa) which is what the fall of Adam and Eve is regarded as because it led to Christ and salvation (“Am I the worthy cross”), so that idea was neatly contained in Mr. McCulloch’s lyric, thank you very much. And the great delivery on “Will I still be soiled / When the dirt is off.”  Sounds like it might be a Christian worried about the taint his soul will receive by offing himself.  Like: is there anyway to cleanse away life, even in the afterlife? 

Doubtful. This song is one kick-ass suicide reverie, as well as a bit metaphysical. That’s the way I always heard the songs of Mucko and the Muddymen, full of longing for some great redemption, looking askance at the best this tragic farce, grim parade, flesh feast (carnival) has to offer, and keeping their eyes on some prize that might be more than even art could provide.

I’ll be turning to others of their songs, I’m sure, in the long year ahead.