Tag Archives: Echo & the Bunnymen

TunesDay: that new old sound

If you pay attention to my music entries, you may have noticed a recurrent theme. It seems a lot of the bands I hear these days, many of which I really like, remind me of bands from the past. Like The Mary Onettes:

I recently tripped across one such example, Sweden’s The Mary Onettes. They can’t seem to make up their minds whether they want to be The Church, Echo & the Bunnymen, or maybe something along the Joy Division/New Order continuum.

And The Flaws:

In a nutshell, The Flaws are [Joy Division] meets The Killers with a smattering of Johnny Marr. Read more

TuneSunday Video Roundup: The Killers and M83 live in Denver

We went to see The Killers at DU last night. A few stray thoughts, in no particular order of importance.

1: There are air raid shelters with better acoustics than Magness Arena. I’m guessing it makes for a suitably noisy hockey barn, but let’s just say that it’s sub-optimal for a concert. Still, the crew managed to make the band sound pretty darned good, all things considered. So a tip of the hat to the sound guys.

2: M83, the opening band, is good. Really good. Read more

TunesDay: obscurity and influence

Who are the most influential bands and artists in the history of rock? Well, start with The Beatles and Elvis, I guess, and for good reason. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Stones, of course, The Who and David Bowie. The big names. All of them signed their names on our culture with a fat permanent marker, and in doing so insured that just about all future artists would have to navigate their legacies in one way or another.

The funny thing, though, is just how influential some far, far lesser known artists became. Many people have heard of Velvet Underground, although comparatively few have actually listened to them, but if you factor VU’s overwhelming influence out of our collective cultural history would we have had Bauhaus, Echo & the Bunnymen, Lenny Kravitz, Sonic Youth, Jesus & Mary Chain (and subsequently Black Rebel Motorcycle Club), Galaxie 500 (and the army of bands that followed their lead) and REM?

How about Big Star? Read more

Pleasure songs

The last three or four years have seen a veritable explosion in New Wave- and ’80s-influenced bands. A few of these groups have found ways to take their influences and move their music forward (The Killers, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, The Strays), while most of the rest remain captive to the sounds of the bands they so clearly love.

But damn, some of the latter crowd are so good at it that I hardly mind how derivative they are. I mean, fantastic takes on things I’ve heard before are better than uninspired new efforts, right?

I recently tripped across one such example, Sweden’s The Mary Onettes. Read more