English Rock: Echo & the Bunnymen's Echo & the Bunnymen

The UPS truck didn’t stop, barreling across the intersection in front of me. I braked hard, started to slip and slide on the snow. I braked hard, learner’s permit in my pocket. I braked hard; my mom yelled in panic telling me how to turn the wheel into the skid so that I could get control again. Back under control, we continued to drive through the falling snow. Back under control, my mom turned down the music in the car, a little too loud when you’ve just had a near miss. She turned down the music. . .

The cassette tape in the player that morning was brand new, having received it for Christmas 1987 just a few days earlier. That album became inseparably linked that morning with snow, blizzards, driving in the snow, winter. That’s how an English Rock band from Liverpool came to be my snow music.

Echo & the Bunnymen released their self-titled album on Sire Records in 1987. There’s really nothing much in the lyrics to suggest winter. Oh, there’s the line in the opening song, “The Game,” “Everybody’s got their own good reason/why their favourite season/is their favourite season/Winter winners/and those summer sons/aren’t good for everyone….” Then there’s a wintry scene in a cemetery in “Lost and Found.” But over all, this isn’t “Shotgun Down the Avalanche” by Shawn Colvin.

Music becomes attached to certain emotions, but it also becomes attached to certain events, weather, places, etc. This is another reason for organizing my CD collection into The Spectrum, because then the winter music, the snow music, the driving music, the rain music, the Northwoods music, the desert music, seem to be easier to find. As that range of sound leads you to the right sound for the day, so also The Spectrum leads you to the albums that suggest certain atmospheres and settings.

Echo & the Bunnymen stand in the middle of the English Rock section. Following after the Smiths, they lead into the typical English sound—Oasis, Coldplay, the Stone Roses. While this aren’t all snow music, there is something about the English sound that goes perfect with weather events: rain, wind, storms, snow, blizzards. There’s something about the electric guitar sounds cultivated by Will Sergeant (Echo), Johnny Marr (Smiths), Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Jonny Buckland (Coldplay), and John Squire (Roses), that readily become a soundtrack for rain pelting the windows, passing cars while driving through the snow, or the house being rocked by the wind on a dark night.

Interestingly, I can now see that Echo & the Bunnymen, my snow album, taps into many of the different feelings one has about snow. [I should mention hear that this album is what I play while the snow is still falling, preferably falling heavily. There are other albums for blowing and drifting, for sleet, for the dead cold of winter.] “Lips Like Sugar” suggests that desire to just curl up inside with a lover watching the snow. “Bombers Bay” in its reflections on the travesty of war taps into the bleakness of a winter storm. “All in Your Mind” tries to sort out lies from imagination, faith in God from the truth in the world, asking questions about whether it is just all in our minds. This swirling search is akin to the introspection that a good drive in the snow brings about. As you watch the world disappear in white, it causes you to think through the greater complexities of life.

So these are my snow songs now, these English Rock songs from the land of rain and fog, now demanded to be heard this morning—2-3 inches of new snow, the snow still falling as I drove to Woodland Dunes Nature Center to go snowshoeing. These songs are my companion on the slippery streets with the flashing light of a snowplow up ahead. And even when these songs get my thinking, I’m always driving defensively waiting for that UPS truck to pull out on me again (but Mom’s not around, so I turn the music up!).

You can read more here about Echo & the Bunnymen including the release of the first five albums, digitally remastered, which includes the self-titled album from 1987.