State College hit the big time last night. Yeah you probably didn’t even realize, it did you? Well, just so you know, a major band that influenced a lot of music throughout the 90’s decided, for some reason that I can’t figure out, to stop in town on their tour.

Echo and the Bunnymen, the British alt rock band extremely well known in the 80’s and early 90s, hopped over the pond and are on their US Tour. The tour started at Coachella and then made its way to the Filmore in San Fran, Metro in Chicago, Philly, then here before heading off to sold out shows in DC and NYC. Yeah, they’re pretty amazing, and you missed it.

I’m not going to sit here and scold you like an old man, though. Hell, I was only 1 year old when they wrote “The Killing Moon” (I’m old, get over it). But I’m going to tell you that they put on a hell of a show at the State Theatre. The sound was incredible in there–they had a first rate sound producer that made sure that the gritty guitars and echoing drums roared and thundered throughout the venue.

They played a good handful of their standards, but also played a decent amount of songs of their new album The Fountain. You could pick these songs out because they had a certain flare of modernness to them, but they still vibrantly held the distinct Bunnymen sound.

Throughout the night, they played in the shadows, only letting us see their silhouettes. It was pretty cool, but it pissed me off as a photographer. In fact, all the photographers there from the different media outlets were bitching about it. Do you know what it took for me to crack off this photo?!

But I digress, it was classic 90’s cool. The visual only helped make my night when they played “The Killing Moon“. The haunting ballad played from the shadows sent chills throughout the 40-year-old audience, who were all on their feet by mid-show. It sent me back to days of Atari, legwarmers, and fingerless gloves.

[Photo Credit: Stefan Choquette]