Echo & The Bunnymen: The First Four
Never stop with the first four LPs from Liverpool's second greatest band
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*This article will dive into the first four albums by Echo & The Bunnymen as released in the United States. Some of the songs included on US versions may not have been included on UK pressings.
Echo & The Bunnymen began their existence with a double whammy of expectation. First, they emerged from the Liverpool music scene of the late 70’s darkened by the long shadow of their forebears, The Beatles. Second, they were building a new sound and vision in the wake of a post-punk Britain.
Economic ruin and the punk movement had irrevocably shaped the culture of the mid and late 1970’s in Britain. As a new decade began, this new quartet of Liverpudlians would ring in the 1980’s with an assemblage of energy, angst, guitar driven edge, and nascent technology.
Formed by singer/guitarist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant, and bassist Les Pattinson in 1978, Echo & The Bunnymen largely recorded and performed during their first two years with a drum machine. Urban legend long held that the ‘Echo’ in the band’s name was a nod to the drum machine, but Sergeant has rebuffed this idea.
Drummer Pete de Freitas joined in 1980 just in time for the band to record its debut album, Crocodiles. Combining nascent percussive elements from their drum machine and de Freitas’ analog kit, Echo carved out a new sound for their rhythm section.
McCulloch’s anthemic voice cuts through on even the earliest recordings. Harnessing the power of his Liverpudlian howl around the corners of Will Sergeant’s deft guitar flourishes; voice, bass, guitar and drums coalesced to a new sound for a new age.
The Bunnymen were heeled as much upon glam and punk as The Beatles and The Stones. Instead of simply opting for the raging clatter of The Sex Pistols or the machine like thump of Joy Division, Echo managed to synthesize new digital tools, chamber pop, psychedelia, and the compressed melodicism of the British Invasion into their ansgty new breed of post-punk.
Crocodiles, the debut Echo full-length is chock-a-block with urgent musicality and ambition. The careening, chaotic opening of ‘Going Up’ signals a frenzied paranoia. Frenetic whines and chirps bounce, and swerve in a cacophony of sonic bedlam.
For sixty seconds the tension builds as the inharmonious clatter reaches a boiling point, and from the tumult, an ardent song emerges fully formed, and propulsive. Sergeant’s crystalline guitar rakes and McCulloch’s moody, breathy voice announce the arrival of a great new band.
‘Pictures On My Wall’, which would appear on the album, was released as a single in the UK a year before Crocodiles was released. While it didn't chart, the second single ‘Rescue’ managed to hit #62 on the UK singles chart. ‘Rescue’ would later appear on the American version of Crocodiles.
Highlights like the raucous ‘Do It Clean’ and the eerie ‘All That Jazz’, along with those previous singles proved that Echo could write anthemic pop songs within their world of textured, gloomy, goth adjacent post-punk.
Echo are as much about tone and presentation as they are the songs themselves. From the offing, the band exuded a cool, contrarian tack. McCulloch once told an interviewer, “If you think [U2's] I Will Follow is an anthem,'I Will Lead' is the song I would have written.”
There is a rough, youthful aarogance to Crocodiles. Echo & The Bunnymen circa 1980 had found a sound, a look, a mood and some terrific tunes. As they harnessed their ambition and their talents, they truly began ‘going up’ right away.
Just ten months after the release of their debut, Echo & The Bunnymen roared back with their sophomore album, Heaven Up Here. The band enlisted Hugh Jones, who had engineered Crocodiles, as producer. Working quickly, the band and Jones took a sonic leap forward in exacting their sound.
Heaven Up Here exhibits the various influences that had built Echo. The propulsive rhythms of the Velvet Underground are deeply engrained in de Freitas’ drumming. As a performer, McCulloch regularly channels DNA from Mick Jagger and Jim Morrisson. His terrific vocal skills and his own unique mannerisms prevent the influence from melding to mimicry.
On ‘Over The Wall’, McCulloch sings a modified vocal refrain of Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ as a way to remind the listener that despite the tone and texture, Echo & the Bunnymen are still just a rock band. A very unique, and special rock band.
Obvious album highlight ‘A Promise’ features McCulloch’s transcendent voice hanging over the chiming guitar riff that centers the track. The title track features spastic guitar washes, and a vigorous, unrelenting rhythm section pouring from the speakers. McCulloch wails over the din, “I'm on my own in my blind alley, I turn myself around so it's swallowing me.”
‘The Cutter’, the lead track, and first single from their third long player, Porcupine announces the arrival of a new, more mature Echo & The Bunnymen. The clamorous energy of the first two albums is still very much present. The moodiness remains as well. Sergeant and McCulloch’s songwriting had become more confident, and more self-assured.
Studio techniques like strings and other orchestra instruments, lend a sort of timeless anachronism to Porcupine. The album certainly sounds like it was made in 1983, but it also possesses a sonic quality that makes it feel like a relic of the past and a discovery of the future all at once.
The seasick strings that open ‘The Cutter’ and provide its foundational refrain harken to a lost Middle Eastern landscape while feeling right at home in Liverpool. With a maturing ear for arrangements and instrumentation, Echo were now elevating very good songs to something into the realm of greatness.
‘The Back Of Love’, in its panicky glory traces a line between the frenetic energy of their early albums and the more sophisticated production now being employed. Frantically strummed guitars howl in angular rakes while strings pulse and pound.
Sergeant is a master at using the guitar the same way a composer would use the string section of an orchestra. In addition to impassioned strumming, and chiming arpeggiation, Sergeant also adds delicate counter-melodies and builds sections of songs around seemingly simple guitar riffs. That mixture of songwriting, production, style, instrumentation and arrangement would reach its apex on 1984’s stunning, symphonic Ocean Rain.
While the production on Porcupine signaled a big step forward for the band, the reception for the album was poor. Critics thought it a step back form the first two albums, despite praise for the opening pair of songs; ‘The Cutter’ and ‘The Back Of Love’.
Echo dropped the single ‘Never Stop’ in July of 1983. A propulsive and percussive string section belt out a rhythm with piano punctuated by Sergeant’s wailing guitar washes. Anthemic, easy to sing along with, and musically ambitious, it appeared that Echo might be fully back on track.
Ocean Rain hit shelves in May of 1984. In anticipation of the release, Echo released a new self-produced single that January. The tune was a ballad in a minor key, led by lush strings and acoustic guitar. It seemed an unlikely choice for a hit. But more than a hit, ‘The Killing Moon’ would go on to become the song that defined them as a band.
From the opening notes of album starter, ‘Silver’, Ocean Rain resides in its own pop music universe. There is no other record quite like it, even within the Echo & The Bunnymen canon. It is forward thinking but steeped in classical textures. The songs are maudlin but anthemic. Most of the record is a collection of mid-tempo tunes that never get stale or monotone.
There is a playfulness to the album despite how seriously it appears to take itself. Sergeant was able to assemble a 35 piece orchestra for the sessions. “We wanted to make something conceptual with lush orchestration; not Mantovani, something with a twist.”
By coalescing their generational immersion in their 60’s forbears, being held by the early wave of punk, and a relentless desire for new sounds and textures, Echo & The Bunnymen forged themselves into a wholly unique band that delivered an absolute masterpiece in their fourth album, Ocean Rain.
While the band would have huge success with their self-titled fifth album, a series of solo albums and friction within the band sent Echo into hiatus for a few years. They have since reemerged with the occasional record and the band still tour regularly around the world.
Just last year, I attended an Echo show in Detroit. The set was heavy on these first four albums, and the big set piece tracks from Ocean Rain, like ‘The Killing Moon’, ‘Seven Seas’ and the title track which were the basis for the finale of the show.
Echo & The Bunnymen chiseled a new band out of old stock, honed a style and ethos, and crafted a patchwork masterpiece in the space of just four years. Not bad for a quartet of dudes and a drum machine growing up in the shadow of that other band from Liverpool.
Cheers,
Matty C
Fab write up of fabulous band. That string of first four albums is astounding. I started on a Crocodile’s EP with a life version of Over the Wall, as they say when Peter joined on drums they became a band.
In the summer of ‘84 when our upstairs toilet leaked and a chunk the living room ceiling caved in, it was an Ocean Rain promo poster that covered the unsightly hole for at least a few “moons”. I had hoped to tell Mac that story when we opened for them but he wasn’t having any of that nonsense!