Consistently stellar programming across the board aside, if there’s one thing you can rely on Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival for it’s delivering on a solid headliner. This year is no exception. Doubling up as the Ian McCullough-fronted band’s first show in the city since 2015, the Festival Marquee will play host to legendary Liverpool band Echo and the Bunnymen on Friday, May 3. Tickets are priced £25 and are on sale now.
Aidan Kelly Murphy captures Echo and the Bunnymen, with support from fast-rising Dublin duo Darling, at the Olympia on Wednesday night.
Thirty-seven years in, Echo & The Bunnymen’s repute as one of the most vital and influential British rock bands ever is long beyond contention. Notwithstanding a couple of reunions and several line-up changes, Ian McCullough and co – founding guitar/songwriter Will Sergeant and a considerably more callow touring band – have battened down the hatches for the long run, summoning their pioneering post-punk “glory days” on stage where recent recorded material has just fallen short of that early vitality. Tonight they offer up the timeless magic once more, an undeniably legendary proposition. With a steady stream of expectant heads herding into the Mandela Hall, singer-songwriter Mark…
For one glorious moment, Echo & The Bunnymen stood on the precipice of the world, and it seemed like Mythic Glory was theirs for the taking. Then they had an extended holiday, released a commercial sell-out album, and broke up. About ten years later, they found themselves in a similar position, at the forefront of perhaps the most spectacular comeback in pop history, Doing it Clean. But what happened in the next fifteen years? “I know the reality of life, and where we are in the world. I’m not an idiot, you know,” Will Sergeant tells Steven Rainey. More than…