The End of the Eighties, Track 23

“Lips Like Sugar (12” Mix)”
Echo & the Bunnymen
Just Say Yes
1987

Surprisingly, Echo & the Bunnymen’s “Lips Like Sugar” is the only Bunnymen song on the playlist, but like Xymox’s “Blind Hearts”, it was originally found on both the Thursday’s and Bowling Green mix CDs. This track definitely earned its spot on both collections, though. Echo & the Bunnymen was a staple among my Akron friends Jen and Nancy and me on those Northeast Ohio nights spent driving around, as well as out on the dance floor at Thursday’s.

As for my Bowling Green associations with the song, well, that’s a somewhat longer story…

I’m pretty sure Labor Day weekend was the first time my college friend Jen took me home with her. During that period, my relationship with my parents was still pretty rocky, so instead of trying to find a ride back to Northeast Ohio or asking my parents to come pick me up, I accepted Jen’s offer to come home with her for the long weekend. She had a beat-up Datsun 210 dubbed “Bob” that she kept at school and drove us down to her mom’s house in Columbus in it.

I can still see the interior of her mom’s old house, and I remember Jen walking me through it and how it just sort of spiraled upwards as we made our way from the ground floor up to her attic room. We passed an ironing board in the room at the bottom of the attic stairs (that I’m fairly certain was wood paneled) that had one of those old 12x12, heavy stock record cover art posters used in record store displays. I’m not certain, but I think it was either Prince’s Lovesexy or a Depeche Mode album cover.

On the drive from her mom’s house to the Short North for the monthly gallery hop that end-of-summer Saturday night, we cranked Echo’s “Lips Like Sugar” and sang along at the top of our lungs. That night at the gallery hop, we met up and hung out with many of Jen’s local friends from Columbus’ alternative scene, but here’s where details get hazy… I know we ran into one particular girl Jen had gone to high school with, and, for whatever reason, Jen and I both broke into “Lips Like Sugar” after we parted ways with the friend. I think it was something goofy and (embarrassingly now) maybe slightly derogatory or mean-spirited on our part, but I’m not certain all these years later. I just know that it cracked us up for the rest of the weekend, and carried over with us back to campus when we returned to BG.

This version of “Lips Like Sugar” was originally available on the US 12” release in August of 1987, but I found it on Just Say Yes: Sire’s Winter CD Music Sampler released a few months later. (Sire’s music samplers produced seven volumes between 1987’s Just Say Yes and 1994’s Just Say Roe. By and large, they were treasure-troves of alternative music rarities, where you could find everything from remixes to non-album tracks.)

The song itself comes from the Bunnymen’s self-titled album from the same year. Arguably, their most commercially successful album, it’s a collection of songs that captures the jangly neo-psychedelic, synthpop of the Liverpool post-punk scene that also spawned Big in Japan, The Teardrop Explodes (including extensive cross-pollination and acrimony with Julian Cope), Dalek I Love You, and Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark. Echo & the Bunnymen contains the playful “Bedbugs & Ballyhoo” and the shimmering “All My Life”. The latter – a sort of spiritual successor to The Beatles “In My Life” – was a song I played extensively that year at BG, letting it inspire me and my writing with its beauty.

Taking the notion of the unattainable girl to swirling pop heights, it’s clear why “Lips Like Sugar” was the biggest hit from the album. Ian McCulloch’s vocals are melty, and when combined with Will Sergeant’s luminous guitar work the result is a near-perfect song of unrequited love.

The End of the Eighties, Track 07

“Candleland”
Ian McCulloch
Candleland
1989

It was a bit of a tossup here. The track in this slot could just as easily be “All My Life”. That Echo & the Bunnymen tune off their self-titled 1987 release is one of my favorites, its circular melody matching the lyrical motion of the chorus perfectly (“All my, all my life / revolves around laughter and crying / as my life turns round and round.”). It’s a beautiful song and easy to see where frontman Ian McCulloch was ultimately headed a couple of years later with his first solo effort.

Candleland is one of those albums that hit at the perfect moment to permanently lodge itself in the musical catalog of my brain. McCulloch released a personal, affecting ten-song collection reflecting on death and rebirth, pulling heavily from the experience of losing both his father and original Bunnymen drummer Pete de Freitas that same year.

The album’s title track is very much the progeny of “All My Life”. There is a maturity about it that belies the melancholy. McCulloch sings of honoring the past while mourning loss. Although reflective Goth-y punks consider death, one’s own mortality is usually the last thing on a 19-year-old’s mind. But with Candleland, McCulloch subtly nudges the listener into headier places by virtue of sharing his own reflections.

I have always loved that cross-pollination within the alternative music scene. Like Sinéad O’Connor’s guest vocals on The The’s “Kingdom of Rain”, Robert Smith’s stint with the Banshees, or Propaganda’s Claudia Brücken showing up on Andy Bell’s solo album, finding Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser on “Candleland” is a treat. Her shimmering vocals only help elevate the song to even greater heights.

A few years later McCulloch’s second solo effort, Mysterio, did nothing for me, but 2003’s Slideling is a wonderful compliment to Candleland. Those two albums still rotate through my player regularly.