Echo & the Bunnymen @ the Metro - 4/23/10

According to the list I put together on Facebook last year, this was the sixth time I've seen this lineup as Echo and the Bunnymen. I've also seen Mac do his solo show once, and I saw them once as Electrafixion (actually, that was the first time I saw Mac and Will Sergeant perform).

I'll give them credit for knowing their audience. This bunch of people was not there to listen to new music, which is kind of too bad. EATB has now released as many studio albums since re-forming in 1997 as they did in their first go-round. While I'm not in love with the last two albums, I really enjoyed Flowers quite a bit, and that was the only album they completely ignored. About 3/4 of the set was old stuff, while they hit one track off of four of the newer albums. In a first for this blog, you're actually about to read a complete and in-the-proper-order setlist (courtesy of the Notes feature on my iPhone):

• Going Up
• Show of Strength
• Rescue
• Villier's Terrace
• Stormy Weather
• Seven Seas
• Bedbugs and Ballyhoo
• Bring on the Dancing Horses
• Rust
• I Think I Need it Too
• All My Colours
• The Disease
• All That Jazz
• Never Stop
• The Back of Love
• The Killing Moon
• The Cutter
• Nothing Lasts Forever
• Do It Clean
• Lips Like Sugar

They played the hits, though the people around me only seemed to care if they played Lips Like Sugar. Want to feel old? Go to an EATB show and have a conversation with a young blonde who doesn't recognize any of the new stuff. Actual conversation between me and a girl standing next to me:

Her: Which song is this?
Me: It's called Nothing Lasts Forever. It's from Evergreen, the first album they put out after they got back together. It came out about 12-13 years ago.
Her: I was five years old.

Hell, I was already older than that when Crocodiles came out in 1980. The years have taken their toll on Mac the Mouth. His voice raspy from years of performing and thousands of packs of cigarettes, he can't quite hit the howl that he had in his youth, and it's really evident on the Porcupine era material (Never Stop, Cutter, Back of Love). Still, they know how to put on a good show, and Mac has never lost his sense of cool. The fact that you can't understand what language he's speaking during the between song banter is all part of the appeal. Will Sergeant can still get his guitar to hit the stingers and subtleties that made him a legend.

I was a little pre-occupied with the Kings game going on and some other things on my mind, but this probably wasn't my favorite Echo show. Still, they were entertaining, and they're worth $25 every few years. Pics below.