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TORONTO - Ian McCulloch makes fifty seem fabulous.
The sunglasses-wearing frontman of hugely influential '80s British post-punk act Echo & The Bunnymen may be a half-century old but he remains one of those rock 'n' rollers who is effortlessly cool.
Whether he was rambling in his thick Liverpudlian accent - "Any questions?" he asked while killing time at the band's show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Tuesday night during the group's only Canadian date of their 30th anniversary tour - or just lighting a cigarette while on stage, McCulloch's confidence and charisma made him highly watchable.
"It's lovely to be back in Canada and Toronto especially," he said. "I like it a lot."
"I like it colder," he continued, making a reference to the city's unseasonably warm temperatures in mid-October while dressed in a hoodie and pea coat. "Can you make it colder?"
At times, it seemed as if Liam Gallagher of Oasis had stolen all his best stage moves as McCulloch alternated between having both hands on his microphone while he sang dramatically in near darkness or crouching down on his knees and staring at the audience which filled about three-quarters of the venue.
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Sadly, his vocals were in a rough shape although by the end of the night he seemed to finally find the higher range of his voice.
"Too many interviews, too may ciggies," explained McCulloch of his hoarseness early in the concert, which was divided into two sets.
There were new songs from the band's just-released 10th album, The Fountain, and older material in the first half, and a performance with a 10-piece orchestra of the band's 1984 masterpiece, Ocean Rain, in its entirety in the second half.
McCulloch and original Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant were joined by four other musicians (guitarist Gordy Goudie, bassist Stephen Brannan, keyboardist Jez Wing and drummer
Nick Kilroe) for their initial 50-minute set which kicked off with chestnuts like Going Up, Show Of Strength, Rescue and Villliers Terrace (with a snippet of The Doors' Roadhouse Blues), before finally venturing into The Fountain territory with Forgotten Fields and later Think I Need It Too.
Other hits/gems included Dancing Horses, Stormy Weather, The Disease, All That Jazz, The Cutter and Nothing Lasts Forever (with a couple of verses of Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side thrown in enthusiastically by McCulloch who requested a singalong by the crowd).
Then it was off for a 20-minute intermission before the band returned augmented by the orchestra seated at the back of the stage for a bigger-and-better-sounding second half as they performed Ocean Rain from start to finish, starting with Silver and ending with the title track.
Highlights came towards the end of the second set as The Killing Moon, Seven Seas, and My Kingdom featured great guitar work from a perpetually bent over Sergeant, while old black and white photos of the original band (notably a full-lipped, wide-eyed and pretty McCulloch) flashed in the background before a computer malfunction shut the fun slide show down.
For his part, McCulloch seemed bolstered by the fuller sound and nostalgic visuals around him and by the encore he was finally and fully in his element during such epic-like songs as All My Colours and Lips Like Sugar.