Ian McCulloch whisks the audience back to the 1980s, overcoat and all, as Echo & The Bunnymen deliver a rousing performance in Sheffield
Echo & The Bunnymen
City Hall, Sheffield Touring until March 1
Rating: 
Alt-J
The Dream Out Friday
Rating:
Ian McCulloch is wearing an overcoat. A long black one, brushing his shins. For Echo & The Bunnymen fans of a certain age – ie, nearly all of them – the coat is as evocative as an old hit.
It whisks us back to 1982, when rock stars wore overcoats to show how serious they were.
The Bunnymen are still making that point: when their guitarist, Will Sergeant, spoke to The Yorkshire Post last year, the headline was ‘We weren’t a fluffy pop band’.
Steaming through the first six songs without so much as a quip, Ian McCulloch (above) has nothing to declare but his presence
The age of the overcoat has long since passed. The last prominent coat in pop is Liam Gallagher’s parka, for which McCulloch may be partly responsible. Like Liam, he’s a member of the Just Stand There school of stardom.
Steaming through the first six songs without so much as a quip, he has nothing to declare but his presence.
It’s enough, just. It goes well with the Bunnymen’s sound – fast songs that feel like slow ones with their aching sadness. Unlike some of their post-punk contemporaries, they are not oppressively male.
On February 18 the Bunnymen’s biggest hits will reappear on vinyl on the classic compilation Songs To Learn & Sing, and their biggest are also their best. Saved for the end of the show, they transform the atmosphere.
Bring On The Dancing Horses, with its chiming sweetness, gets the crowd singing; The Cutter is funky and full of menacing allure.
Returning for the encore, McCulloch introduces ‘Sheffield’s finest, Richard Hawley’.
They pay tribute to The Velvet Underground, the godfathers of post-punk, with a fierce I’m Waiting For The Man. And then it’s time for The Killing Moon, the Bunnymen’s finest hour.
Both brooding and rousing, it’s as powerful as that overcoat – which McCulloch is still wearing.
Younger bands, like other people’s children, tend to be older than you think. It’s ten years since Alt-J made their name and won the Mercury Prize with An Awesome Wave.
By then they had already been together for five years after meeting at Leeds University, which gave them time to find their niche – electro-pop with a tinge of prog rock.
The Dream, their fourth album, adds an extra layer by delving into pop history. There’s folk, blues, even gospel, and Alt-J are often confident enough to do very little, letting Joe Newman’s soulfulness shine out.
Get Better, especially, is superb: an ode to a dying lover that is subtle, vivid and touching.
