Echo and the Bunnymen @ Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 28 May

Touring a forthcoming album that promises reworked versions of classics alongside new songs refracted through “strings and things," an Echo and the Bunnymen gig at the austere, seated Bridgewater Hall comes with a warning of flashing lights and haze. We expect hushed majesty, soaring hymns triumphantly reappraising a gilded past, a visitation from one of the last of a certain breed of rock gods. Instead, we get strangeness.

Four young women take to the stage, dressed to the nines, and take up violins and a cello. A drummer follows, then a keyboardist and two young men, who nervously hold a guitar and a bass respectively. The actual Bunnymen – frontman Ian McCulloch, skinny as a whip in black leather and sunglasses, and guitarist Will Sergeant, looking like Ricky Tomlinson called up for jury duty – fill what is left of the enormous stage. They launch into Rescue, their second single, released in 1980. It sounds like it ought – not reworked, just a little rougher around the edges than perhaps it once was.

Then we get Villiers Terrace and All That Jazz, two more songs from their debut album. We look at our tickets and wonder if we’re going to get all of Crocodiles but no, they throw in Stormy Weather from 2005’s Siberia, a song that deserves to be ranked alongside their best. But something doesn’t feel right. Mac tries talking to the crowd, but he’s barely coherent when he isn’t singing. He prowls around like Liam Gallagher’s dad. “Come on Mac,” people yell, like they want something they’re not getting, while Sergeant barely looks up.

We get Lips Like Sugar and people lose their collective shit. Lots of people rise to their feet, but lots of people stay sitting. The tension between those people who wanted a sit down Bunnymen gig and those people who just want the Bunnymen to roar like they once did is palpable. They follow Lips Like Sugar with Rust, a lovely but mellow song. Everyone sits. Even the band can’t seem to decide if they want a stripped back ringing of the changes (as they signal on Nothing Lasts Forever) or the raucous caterwaul that demonstrates what an influential band they once were. All of which makes for a slightly unsatisfactory hodgepodge. 

The main problem is all of the people on the stage don’t feel like a band. This is Echo and the Bunnymen deconstructed, like a disappointing Masterchef trifle, and no end of great songs can change it.