Almost ever present, and almost ever beautiful, ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN look forward to the next 6 months with a new re-release campaign (their first four albums with reappear on vinyl on 22 October) and a new tour (playing the Sage, Gateshead, in February).  Damian Robinson talked to guitarist Will Sergeant about looking backwards in order to look forward. 

With the recent memoir, and now the reissues, you must have spent the last year or so looking at your past.  How’ve your found it?

Yeah I guess I have, but I also tend to look backwards, looking backwards is in the new forwards.  Sometimes, when you listen to the news, you’re given the sense that there’s nothing to look forward to. 

Do you find listening to your earlier Bunnymen work emotional?

Not really, I’m not really an emotional person in that way.  We did a Tim’s listening party recently and what’s perhaps more emotional is that way that people talk about how important the music was to them.  Sometimes you’ve got no idea how your records affect other people and it’s nice to hear back that your music has meant something to other people and touched their lives in some way.  Hearing those types of stories can make me more emotional than anything.

How do you listen back to your earlier work?  Do you hear the things you’d change or the things you enjoy?

It’s been a while since I’ve really sat and listened to the albums.  In the early days you’d hear the note that you played wrongly, or you’d hear the mistakes that you’d change.  But as time goes on you start to forget about those things and focus on the record as a whole.  Again when we did Tim’s listening party I just enjoyed listening to what I thought was a really good collection of songs that worked as one full piece of art.  That’s what I’m most happy with. 

The up and coming tour is that going to be an album playback tour?

No it’ll  be more like a collection of our music, we’re nowhere near looking at the set for that, but hopefully we’ll get a couple of new songs in there as well.

There was talk of a new record being worked on from the Bunnymen, will we hear something from that?

We’ll see how we go.  We had started a new record but we stopped with covid, so we’ll see where we get to in terms of picking that up and having something out soon.  Hopefully there’ll be some new songs in the set but again we just need to see where we are.

Echo and the Bunnymen play Sage Gateshead in February – their reissues are released 22 October.