Echo & The Bunnymen reached the height of their fame in the 1980s, a rock band sweeping the alternative scene. There’s something risky about regrouping now, almost 40 years on, for a band like that. We’ve seen many lead singers lose their voices, bands starting to look tired and paunchy around the middle, their vibrancy long gone but trying desperately to cling to the sounds of their youth. It can seem contrived, awkward, a little embarrassing even, but I held out hope for Echo & The Bunnymen. Other bands that had reached stardom in and around the same time were still going strong – The The seemed to sound the same, Eddie Vedder was sounding even better – maybe Echo & The Bunnymen could achieve the same?

Bands from the ‘80s and beyond who continued to knock about in today’s world had one of two fates available to them; either they would have aged like a fine wine and have a new fan base to build on their own – millennials who had grown up listening to the music their parents enjoyed (like me) – or they would be aged and obsolete, with nothing of relevance to offer the current music scene. This fear appears every time an old great threatens to re-enter the stage. Can they really live up to their heyday?

It depends on the band, obviously: on how heavily they partied in the ‘80s and ‘90s, on whether or not they are still writing new music, and on whether or not this new music has continued to land with their target audience. The die-hard fans, the ones who were there from the beginning, are often a good standard by which to judge the success of the band. Having witnessed the heights of their glory, they have high expectations, and know what they want to hear from their heroes. The die-hard fans comprised the entire audience of Echo & The Bunnymen in The Olympia this October, with only a few exceptions, like me. I went with my dad. The auditorium was filled with men and women in their fifties and sixties, and I was watching their reactions closely; I might have thought Ian McCulloch’s voice had withstood the test of time, but if the band were any less amazing than these people had remembered, it would be abundantly clear. But the crowd swayed and danced, and sang and cheered for the entirety of the gig. The band were reassuringly good, holding onto the same offbeat charm they’d been loved for, and the night offered an invigorating reminder of days of youth for both the audience and the band members onstage.

The Stars, The Ocean & The Moon was released this October: an album comprised of songs from their back catalogue, there is nothing drastically new about it. The decision to bring out an album of their best loved tracks, embellished with “strings and things” was an interesting one for me. It’s something we’ve seen before – last December, Eddie Vedder brought a string quartet onstage with him, and reinvented “Jeremy” (unrelated, but possibly the most electric experience of my life). But more interestingly than the choice to bring a more rounded, orchestral sound to their songs was the decision not to release an album full of new songs. There is “The Somnambulist”, of course, which was previously unheard, but the rest of the album relies on the tried and trusted. This choice reminded me of Matt Johnson, when talking about not having released new music over the span of fifteen years with The The. He said that those songs, the songs the band achieved fame with, were symptomatic of a specific moment in his life. The band and the sound was founded on these moments of youth, a certain set of moments which cannot be recreated. He wasn’t saying that the songs were no longer relevant, but to insert songs from a different perspective into the band’s catalogue just didn’t seem to fit. I feel like the same idea can apply to Echo & The Bunnymen, who do not shy from the fact that this is a different world to that of the ‘80s, and who are not desperately courting a younger audience. Instead, they are committed to preserving these moments of youth, these specific moments in time, both for themselves and for their fans.

While The Olympia gig did not feature the same depth of orchestral sound that The Stars, The Ocean and The Moon offers, it was instead classic. Charged with energy, and hinging on a bittersweet nostalgia, the night was thoroughly enjoyable. The Stars, The Ocean and The Moon was just the cherry on top. It is not more of the same. It shocks the songs back to life, and injects them with emotion in a way that may have been lost through time. The band are able to bring their experiences in life to this album, to the songs that are so well loved. This album represents this slice of youth I’d talked about, looked back on through the eyes of an older version of themselves, a more lived version of themselves. It feels to me like revisiting past memories, with the experiences of life since shading them to incredibly emotive effect. “The Killing Moon” is haunting, spellbinding, and fantastic; a perfect ending to a really interesting album, and a perfect note to leave you on, also.