Echo & the Bunnymen’s Brussels Is Haunted: A Beautiful, Melancholic Return to Form

I didn’t realise that Echo & the Bunnymen was still going as a band, but after hearing Brussels is Haunted, I am glad that it is.  I remember Ian McCulloch leaving the band in the late 1980s and then there was a resurrection in the late 1990s with Evergreen, but after that I lost track. They are now apparently a two-piece, with original members Will Sergeant on lead guitar and programming and Ian McCulloch on vocals, rhythm guitar and keyboards.  So, you can tell I’m not a diehard Bunnymen fan, but I think Brussels is Haunted is a great track. Plus there is a new album, Apples for Isaac coming out in September.

You can watch the video below, which is by Jef de Smet, and an intriguing, animated piece that matches the mood and the lyrics perfectly.  Even though I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a performance of the song as such, the video is a fantastic evocation of Brussels as a place of ghosts, memories and faded glamour - a city where history, art and personal stories seem to linger in every street and square. Like the song itself, it feels both nostalgic and slightly unreal, capturing that very Bunnymen combination of beauty, mystery and melancholy.  Plus, any song that namechecks Plastic and Bert Bertrand is going to get a listen or two from me…

Brussels Is Haunted feels like Echo & the Bunnymen turning Brussels into a dreamscape where personal memories collide with European history. The city is haunted not by ghosts alone, but by wars, art, romance and lost moments - from World War I, Waterloo and World War II to the imagined threat of World War III. In classic Bunnymen fashion, melancholy, myth and destiny blur together: Brussels is haunted because we are.

As a quick aside, while I wrote this, I put Ocean Rain on – because why not? I’ve already put a sell-by date on myself by saying I remember the original split and so a little wander down memory lane wasn’t going to do me any harm.  I think almost anyone of my generation will recognise the opening chords of Silver – the first track on the album and although I believe that most people will say The Killing Moon is the standout track on the album, for me it’s The Yo Yo Man.  It’s amazing to think how the Bunnymen pumped out four brilliant albums over the first five years of the 1980s (and that we took it for granted!).  I seem to remember McCulloch describing Ocean Rain as the greatest album ever made – and he wasn’t that far wrong, frankly.   Brussels Is Haunted is pretty good, too… and after decades of Bunnymen mythology, perhaps the only thing left is to mythologise the mythology itself.

Farewell Bonnie Tyler: Remembering a Pop/Rock Legend and Her Greatest Hits

Goodbye Bonnie Tyler – and thank you for all your wonderful, gutsy over the top performances.  You will most certainly be missed – although we still have your music.  Without wanting to sound maudlin, when you reach a certain age and pop and rock icons shrug off their mortal coils, it does lead to a little reflection – and I have very fond memories of Bonnie Tyler.  Like a lot of people, I first came across her music with Lost in France – while not her first single, it did see her first entry into the UK charts. Sliding gracefully into the Top 10, it was a breezy country-pop delight, with the video particularly popular – she was just lost in France, in love.

The next Tyler song I remember is It’s a Heartache, a great number with the first real vinyl appearance of her raspy vocals.  As the press soon told the country, this was the result of the removal of nodules from her vocal folds – and while perhaps an inadvertent side-effect of the operation, it gave Tyler her trademark voice for which she will always be remembered.

Although Tyler continued to record and release, she fell of my radar until 1981’s Total Eclipse of the Heart which was really very difficult to miss.  With a quite startling video (very bug budget for the time, too) and our first glimpse of rock opera Bonnie (as I have just christened that particular incarnation of hers), it was a global hit and remains close to the hear of millions of people.  In fact, in the homage from the British channel ITV, an interview is played from when she sang the song at the moment of a total solar eclipse. 

Nos da, Bonnie. Cysga'n dda.

...And while we'er at it, why not listen to Total Eclipse again? As much as Bonnie Tyler never got sick of singing it, this is a song that so many of us return to time and time again just for the sake of listening to it one more time...