Tuesday, February 21, 2023

1983 Singles # 3 Echo & the Bunnymen

 

'Conquering myself until. I see another hurdle approaching. Say we can, say we will. Not just another, drop in the ocean.'

The Bunnymen ushered in 1983 with the utterly resplendent and magnificent Cutter. It was and remains incredibly important to me. Forty years later. I risk coming across as self important and idiotic perhaps but it was a song that gave me self confidence and still does. Self-confidence is  an important thing and songs can supply that. The world is not always an easy place to be in. Just listen to The Cutter if you don't believe me.

The Bunnymen bristled with defiance and intent. Sergeant, Pattinson and De Freitas were like a self-contained crack military cohort. McCulloch supplied the script. The attitude and bullets. Porcupine, the album that followed closely on the coattails of The Cutter, was ultimately just that bit too forbidding to pull the girl,  but it remains a statement that endures. A record with many layers.

I wore long coats because of The Bunnymen for a while. Tilted my head at an angle when photographs were taken. It seems foolish from this remove but I stand by my Seventeen year old self . I was gauche and naive and probably slightly ridiculous but I was in the process of constructing my self around bands, books and films. I wanted Camus and Sartre and Midnight Cowboy and Apocalypse Now. Bunnymen fitted my wish list perfectly. They also breached the Top Ten which seemed like another victory.

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