Read It Hear: Lips Like Sugar
In 1984, Echo and the Bunnymen released the critically acclaimed album Ocean Rain. In 1986, their record label began clamoring for a follow-up, but they had something specific in mind. The label chief dragged them into his office, sat them down and played them Peter Gabriel’s So, a fantastic record for sure, but nothing like Echo and the Bunnymen. The band were not happy.
And they proceeded to have a basically unhappy experience recording Echo and the Bunnymen, their 5th album. Sessions started out disorganized, going through studios, drummers and producers before winding up in Cologne Germany at Conny Plank’s studio (I wrote a bit about Conny Plank here).
The album was produced by Laurie Latham, who had previously worked with the Bunnymen on the single 'Bring on the Dancing Horses'. However, Latham and the band were very much at odds with the direction of the album from the start. The band was looking to knock the record out in a few months, similar to how they recorded Ocean Rain. Laurie Latham wanted to do one song at a time... spending months on one song before moving onto another. It drove the band up the wall. They hated the experience and were really unhappy with the album. And reviews were fairly "meh" as well.
The Bunnymen had some great songs, but they do tend to write the same song often—a common occurrence during the 80s, or really anytime in music history. But I love 'Lips Like Sugar', as both a song and an amazing bit of recording and production.
'Lips Like Sugar' was mixed at Amazon Studios in Liverpool by Bruce Lampcov. My guess is it was a 24-track recording, based on what I can find on the sessions, the gear at Amazon at the time, and also from listening to it. My initial thoughts were that this is a dense recording, but it's not: it's well arranged.
At the end I'll take a guess as to the track sheet!
Lips Like Sugar
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Drums
Sounds like a real kit in a room, floor tom to the left, snare center, single rack tom, I think two cymbals, the one on the left seems to cut off really fast throughout the song. Not so much someone grabbing it but more like the channel is muted. It sounds like white noise cutting off. Maybe they overdubbed these? Sounds like a single room mic more than a pair of room tracks. It has no width to the ambience. It could also be all artificial reverb.
Hihat... this is fun. The hat is off to the right, but there's this other thing which sounds like a hihat or a shaker off to the left but on the upbeat. It's hard to hear exactly what is going on here. Kinda sounds like the "Ch Ch" of a shaker and each "ch" is panned wide right and left, so the part is jumping between the speakers. Tears for Fears did a similar thing on 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World'. Except the hihat on the right seems consistently a hihat.
I think the drums are real sounds and not samples. There's just enough variation on the tone and feel. Pete de Freitas was nothing if not very very consistent. Good player, good feel.
There's also some percussion—a bell tree kind of sounding thing at the top and now and then for color.
Bass
The bass, courtesy of Les Pattinson, is locked up on the kick and drives the song along. It's simple for the most part, really a huge pedal tone thing, but there's a lovely figure during the pre-choruses, moving opposite to the vocals. The part also loosens up and moves in and out on the guitar solo. What can I say—it works perfectly with the song.
Guitars
Will Sergeant lays down a guitar orchestra of textures and colors. These are wonderful, inventive parts and they fit together and play off of each other perfectly. It sounds very complex when you first hear it, but I'm hearing five main things going on. Now, these could be five tracks cut each as one performance, or multiple parts overdubbed and then panned and mixed. I don't know. If it's a 24-track master, it's five tracks. If it's 48-track, then it's more. Let's break it down.
There's a lead guitar center at times and off to the right. We'll call this GTR-Right. Then on the left is an almost country-sounding guitar with a sputtering delay doing a 5 note burst, then turning into a two-note figure. We'll call this GTR-Left. I think these are the two main guitar performances or tracks for the song. The lead guitar at the top, I think this becomes the main guitar we hear on the right—someone clicks the overdrive off. This part is drenched in reverb and a delay, playing descending figures, little snippets of notes, chord strikes. GTR-Right is more chaotic than GTR-Left. I think this guitar, GTR-Right, also plays the solo.
These two parts drop out on the pre-chorus, then come back in hitting chords for the choruses. Then they're back for the verses again, but note that they're not doing the same thing each verse. We keep coming back to "Diverse in Unity, Unified in Diversity" as a production maxim.
On the pre-chorus, a thin-sounding guitar with a fast chorus effect on it—GTR-Chorus, comes in, playing a very hooky downwards flowing melody that fits around the vocal and moves in opposition to the bass, which is playing a figure that goes up.
Then, during the verses and every now and again, is a very wet guitar pulled way back into the mix, blended in with all the keyboard tracks. We'll call this GTR-Accent. It is hard to hear and sometimes I don't know that it exists or if it's just the harmonics from everything all blending together.
To simplify all of this in your head: There's single note guitar parts left and right on the verses, they drop out on the pre-chorus and for the guitar solo section, and then come back in for the choruses. And there's a thick chorus'd guitar that comes in for the pre-chorus and drops out after the chorus. And then this other part, GTR-Accent, drifts in and out.
And at the very top is an acoustic guitar strumming off to the left that never comes back. Figure 5 tracks of guitars.
Keyboards
Keyboards... these also could be little guitar parts, sometimes I can't tell, but I think keyboards. They're mainly used for color, not pads.
The intro establishes them off to the right and back. This is a flangy sounding, pizzicato part, wet with reverb—the record overall is very wet. At the top, this keyboard part is echoing a series of picked guitar harmonics. We'll call this part KEYS-Pizz. It goes throughout the song, working around and with GTR-Right.
In the pre-chorus, moving around the center, there's something which sounds like a polyphonic theremin. Call it THEREMIN on a track sheet. The sound of someone rubbing the rim of a wineglass. It comes in right before the pre-chorus starts. It's nearly a vocal and blends into them. On the chorus it's doing whole note arpeggios, octaves. At 1:17, squint for it—it sounds like the voice on the closing music credits of the original Star Trek TV show. It's a really cool part if you can hear it. You almost have to try to not hear it, and suddenly you'll hear it.
At the start of the solo, there's a keyboard bend off to center right, its echo panned to the left. While the GTR-Right plays a solo, that KEYS-Pizz pans left and dries up a little bit, stepping closer to us. Then again, this could be someone smacking guitar harmonics or hitting the strings above the nut, but I think it's that same keyboard part. It makes sense to move it to the left to make room for the solo on the right. I also think the solo is doubled by a keyboard. Listen for this on the right, behind the solo. High flute/string-like sound. A synth patch. 2nd half of the solo.
At the end of the solo, KEYS-Pizz plays a hit on the left and then goes back to the right, opening space for GTR-Left to return to the mix, playing yet another rhythmic part.
At 3:44 on the left there's a beeping sound, like a high pitched electronic baby frog part, blended into the guitar. Call it BABY FROGS.
Into the vamp out, THEREMIN is quite apparent, moving from left to right. Maybe autopanned slowly?
Vocals
Ian McCulloch... a very distinctive singer with a lot of range and vocal color. Sexy voice.
There's a main lead vocal. Call it L-Vox on the track sheet. Close up on a condenser. A touch sibilant but not awfully so, There's a faint whiff of a small room on it. That could be a booth or reverb. There's a harmony double on it—call it VOX-2, but when we get to the "Lips Like Sugar" lyric in that opening, there's a new track—a vocal cut very quietly and very close to the mic. It could be L-VOX still, but it's much drier. He could either be closing up on the mic for it, but to me it sounds like another track. Call it VOX-Close. Listen at around 42 seconds in and you can hear all three of these vocals together. The verse continues with this sort of pattern, these three tracks swapping in and out.
Think of the Verse Vocals like this: L-VOX is in the middle, VOX-2 is wetter and further back, VOX-Close is dry, quiet and up front. They're all panned dead center.
I think there's a separate vocal for the pre-chorus. Call it VOX-Pre. Dryer sound, less warmth to it. Sounds like it's in its own little space.
The chorus vocals are doubled with delays feeding to the left and right on quarter notes. Call them VOX-Chor.
The second verse is similar to the first, L-VOX, VOX-2 and VOX-Close alternating so the distance and the size of the vocal keeps changing. VOX-Pre comes in for the pre-chorus.
Second chorus, the VOX-Chor comes back, but the delay patterns are reversed, now going right to left.
Third verse. This very strange vocal comes in at 3:30. Way close to the mic and strained sounding. Again, I think they're just bringing in those three verse vocals in and out in interesting ways, but when you've got such an expressive singer, it's a wonderful effect.
Other Thoughts
I think they're sneaking the master fader up and down a bit for increased drama and dynamics—listen for a considerable drop in volume after each chorus. The whole thing is beautifully dynamic and invisibly compressed. The feel of 'Lips Like Sugar' is kind of rollicking and very human. The drums are tight but with a lot of groove. Played to a click but not quantized. Wonderful vocals. He gets a ton of mileage out of his voice. And the guitar parts are sublime. Really an outstanding bit of work.
My Track Sheet Guess
Ok... I don't think any of the guitars are recorded to stereo. The whole thing sounds like lots of panned mono tracks to me—the positioning is very tight and precise. Stereo recordings are usually slushier than that. So... 5 guitar tracks, 6 vocal tracks, 2 or 3 keyboard tracks (probably not midi at this time) then... say 2 bass tracks—an amp and a DI, and then maybe kick, snare, rack tom, floor tom, hihat, 2 overheads, maybe 1 room mics and a percussion track... 24 or 25 tracks... loose 2 tracks, one for the timecode and one guard track to keep it from bleeding. The acoustic guitar track at the beginning could have easily been tucked onto a vocal track or one of the keyboard tracks, likewise the percussion. Very doable on a 24-track tape with an automated console.
I laid the sheet out based on conventions of the time and my own way of doing things. Typically, you wouldn't find important things on track 1 or 24, because they could get edge track damage. Of course, people put SMPTE there and if that was damaged, you might have huge problems, but... In thousands of sessions, I never damaged a tape.
I tend to group things visually: if something is supposed to be on the left of the speakers, I want it on an odd-number track sheet box, odd-numbered fader and under my left hand. Left off, right even. I always put bass on 15 and 16, and usually grouped instruments 9-16 and vocals 17 and up. This was mainly so things were consistent from session to session and that if I was setting up a rough mix I could predict where things were without the console being labeled. Basically, everything was about not making mistakes while working as fast as possible.
