The thing about shows right now – and for the next while, at least – is that there’s a lot of goodwill knocking about. Having been denied the experience for so long, people can scarcely believe they’re at a gig, any gig. You can see it in the faces of everyone in Brogan’s beforehand – it’s like the first day at a festival; look, there’s Ruth! Colm, Ciara, Good Man Danny! - and then across the crowd of a fairly packed Olympia theatre; grins – on the faces that are unmasked, backslapping, and general bonhomie. Even that bloke in the dark glasses with all the badges on his jacket and the Joy Division t-shirt cracked a smile, and everyone else – from the more mature in faded paisley to the ‘young’ contingent - seem determined to have a ball no matter what, as what might be Das EFX and what is definitely Steppenwolf and then The Nice play over the P.A. I didn’t even notice a lot of phones out, as would have been the case in the before times; perhaps people have had their fill of living vicariously through electronics?

Anyway, with all that in mind, Echo & The Bunnymen need only avoid burning an effigy of Michael D. Higgins wrapped in a tricolour, or some such heinous misstep, and there should be no complaints. Here’s the dry ice and here’s Ian McCulloch, who has no business looking as good as he does at his age. Long coat? Check. Sunglasses? Check. How can he read that setlist at his feet? Great haircut? Of course. I’m not convinced about those white sneakers but let’s allow them. Will Sergeant looks a bit like he’s about to lead his class on a bracing hill walk, but in a handsome way. He’d be that beardy cool teacher who’d play you Bowie’s Low during a free class, because you need to hear it.

‘Going Up’ and ‘Show Of Strength’ from their 1980 debut Crocodiles and its ’81 follow-up Heaven Up Here respectively are good starting points – slashing guitar riffs, pounding drums and Mac with his two hands on the microphone just like he used to, being impossibly cool. It’s too much for one woman on level one – how beautiful is the Olympia Theatre? it’s been two years since I was in here – who starts waving a massive scarf in the air only to be told to calm down by a near-by security person, while Mac takes a drink from the drum riser and then, after the tremolo sustain of ‘All That Jazz’, gives us a “Nice one, Ta” acknowledgement.

He calls for another drink after “waiting in the sun and counting down the hours” during 2001’s useful ‘Flowers’, which features a great chorus and some stinging solo action from Sergeant, and then inquires as to when the pubs close. It’s an important question but before we have too much time to consider it, there’s a flash of light and that instantly recognisable riff that heralds ‘Rescue’, which is answered with a suitable roar. A couple of hundred voices help out on the chorus while Mac appears to give someone at the side of the stage a bollicking. Sargent has a bit of a wig-out. Clang. CLANG. “Is this the blues I’m singing?” This is good.

Fish-in-a-barrel time with ‘Bring On The Dancing Horses’ as, shrouded in both bright light and dry ice, Mac gives it a single handclap into the microphone, cooler than an eskimo’s toes. “Nice one, cheers, good singing,” says our man before introducing ‘Over The Wall’ as a song that “catapulted us away from all that shite”. The chorus is purpose built for shouting and the guitar solo belongs on a mountain. The rest of the band play like they’re falling from the same precipice, but are determined to go out kicking. The bass and drums try to run us all over during ‘All My Colours/Zimbo’ as an acoustic guitar watches through the window, Sargent gets the e-bow out, and Mac – his voice in the same good nick as the rest of him – goes to the opera.

That teardrop shaped guitar Sergeant straps on is a good sign, and an acoustic strum leads us into a perfect song from a near-perfect album, ‘Seven Seas’. The bells are there during the chorus and when Mac goes into the “burning my bridges” bit we’re all back in 1984 when they ruled. When the song finishes, my mate Pete, who’s been having a religious experience from the off, bellows, “How good do you need it to be?!” and he’s right, it’s pretty bloody good. We’re all doing The Doors boogie during ‘Bedbugs And Ballyhoo’, several arms giving it a bit of the Tales Of The Unexpected manoeuvres, just like we used to do in the youth clubs and school discos of the 1980s. Mac explains how the thunder rumbles in a voice that answers the question what would Jim Morrison or even Johnny Cash have sounded like if they came from near the Mersey.

Echo and the Bunnymen at 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

“This is a new song,” says the man in the spotlight. “Some people will go meaaah, but in twenty years you’ll be hailing it as the classic it is.” Who knows? ‘Brussels Is Haunted’ has a great middle eight although the rest of it sounds a bit like ‘Dancing Horses’ sped up. Still though, if you’re going to borrow… ‘Villiers Terrace’ is as furious as it is welcome and The Bunnymen make some connections by segueing into ‘RoadHouse Blues’ – “save our city, Dublin city” – and then ‘Jean Genie’ before going back to the “bopshu-waddy-waddy-Haile-Selassie” ending.

‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ – their last hit and maybe their last great song, so far – is so good it hardly needs help from Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ – weren’t U2 borrowing this thirty-five years ago? The trick still works - but it gets it anyway, and the crowd get involved, propping up the whole enterprise. ‘Never Stop’ is just a thrilling hit, with a bit of a reverse Zep riff buried somewhere in the back, and ‘The Cutter’, or as Mac spits it “the Cut-TAH”, slices the air with that chord, its Eastern Bazaar opening and then those glorious into-battle keyboard horns, sounding like a liberating legion coming over the hill as the song comes to an end and the boxes around the theatre shake, finshes the main set in triumph, with howls of ‘Best gig ever!’ ringing out around me.

After a bit of the ‘Ole, Ole’ chorus, The Bunnymen come back out and Mac asks who was in McGonagle’s all those years ago. The first one was shite, according to him, but they got better and he did get to meet Phil Lynott, who was a “great, funny dude.” Perhaps in that great man’s honour, ‘Lips Like Sugar’ is a bit harder than I remember it. The voice gets a bit of echo assistance during the chorus, although it hardly needs it, Sergeant heads east again, the drummer earns his wages during sidesteps into Bowie’s ‘Rock N’ Roll With Me’ and an unlikely few lines from, possibly, The Stones’ ‘Emotional Rescue’, and Mac balls up a towel and boots it – with a foot that shows music’s gain wasn’t exactly football’s loss – into the crowd before they disappear again.

Echo and the Bunnymen at 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

Once returned, Mac expresses his anxiousness to get out for a pint in this “great city” before ‘The Killing Moon’. In a rare moment of good taste, my older sister brought Ocean Rain home in the mid-eighties and I fell in love with it. Hand on heart, I think it’s a much better record than the first three. The group-sanctioned press ads from back in the decade where fashion took a few years off used to proclaim it as “the greatest record ever made” and they weren’t far off. They're standing out of their seats in the stalls and taking over from McCulloch, who has the good sense to let them. It’s all a bit euphoric and pretty glorious, although Pete beside me starts singing The Velvet’s ‘Femme Fatale’ just to show that there isn’t much new under the sun.

As they go off again, there are Angels and Devils – just like that ‘Silver’ B-side from so long ago - at my shoulders. On one side sits Denis – he’s had a few Chardonnays - who reckons they were phoning some of tonight in. On the other is Pete who's been close to speaking in tongues for the duration and has been throwing out words like “iconic”, “hero”, and even “God-like” at various points during the proceedings. I’m siding with Pete on this one, as, it seems, is everyone else in the building. As if to prove the point, they come out one last time, to sing a song that’s “not an easy one.” There’s an acoustic strum. It couldn’t be, could it? It is. ‘Ocean Rain’. Their finest few minutes as far as I’m concerned. It’s Scott Walker and Jim Morrison’s lovechild, who makes a single handclap look like it should be on page one of the frontman manual. It bursts into technicolour for Sergeant’s tasteful solo of perfection. Will he go for it? McCulloch's going for it! “Screaming from beNEATH THE WAA-AA-A-A-AVES”. That’s a moment. That’s a song. This was a great gig.