The War on Drugs and The National have spent the early part of the Fall on their Zen Diagram tour, freely confessing that their fan bases overlap significantly. In addition to frontmen Adam Granduciel and Matt Berninger doing joint publicity events, this has also allowed some musical crossovers during the evening. In Toronto, Granduciel joined his co-headliners on Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Bring on the Dancing Horses.”
As well as being the Brat summer, this was Brat Pack summer, and the Bunnymen song made a memorable appearance in the classic John Hughes film Pretty In Pink. We also know that The War on Drugs played the home the Bunnymen this summer, Liverpool. The venue they chose to perform in was close to the legendary Philharmonic Dining Rooms, a pub beloved of the drinking and musical classes (now that is an overlapping Venn Diagram) for over a hundred years. John Lennon complained that one of the prices of fame was not being able to drink there, and Paul McCartney performed a surprise gig in one of the rooms for his Carpool Karaoke appearance. The lead singer of the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch, may (or may not) have defaced the famous toilet facilities there with some Beatles-related graffiti back in the day.
Ian McCulloch and the band had the world at their feet when they created the song. The National and Granduciel are at a different stage of life, and music career. Their version reflects this. After Scott Devendorf establishes the iconic bassline, Berninger brings a more worldly tone to the proceedings than McCulloch originally did. Sure, why not Dancing Horses, can’t be worse than the other problems we have survived? Granduciel adds his layer of guitar psychedelia to the vibe.
