Flowers

Like their heroes, The Velvet Underground, there is something seedy and comfortably dark about Echo And The Bunnymen. It may be a tone of menace. But it’s cool. Undeniably cool.

Having been around in some form or another since the early ’80s, Flowers will bring joy to the hearts of the fans that have worshipped in the church of Ian McCulloch over the years.

These men show all today’s little boys of rock and roll how it’s done. Songs like ‘Hide And Seek’ seem relatively simple at the surface, but there is much going on underneath. No instrument dominates enough to steal the attention away from McCulloch’s singing, yet an organ still ripples sending shivers up the spine and through the roof.

The opening chords on ‘Buried Alive’ echo Lou Reed’s ‘Sweet Jane’ until a lead guitar starts on a riff that brings Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ to mind.

‘Everybody Knows’ picks up the pace of the album, a tad poppier than the Velvet rock elsewhere, but still a cracker. ‘Life Goes On’ opens up with a Byrds like guitar riff from Will Sergeant, but the Byrds comparisons stand for only for a second. As soon as McCullochs vocals kick in it is unmistakably Bunny.

If you missed them live in Vicar St. a few weeks ago (and I can’t think of what sort of fan would have missed them), redeem yourself and obtain a copy of this album post haste.

Bunnymen just got cooler.