Echo and The Bunnymen
Heaven Up Here (1981)
eatdogs
Picking one album from the first five by Echo & The
Bunnymen isn’t a challenge. Crocodiles
was a great start, but with a bit more scabbiness in the musicianship. Third
album Porcupine is more like a bridge
gap to the popular fourth album Ocean
Rain. And at the end there’s Echo
& The Bunny Men, also known as the grey album or just self-titled. What
it really comes down to though is their second album, Heaven Up Here and the almost hazy majestic beauty that oozes from
the cracks. That’s perhaps the best one to pick first…
Heaven Up Here was
made with soul music in mind, but also a dose of The Velvet Underground as an influence.
Don’t let that make you think this album holds the same style as VU in the mix
though. Really the band is simply inspired by VU’s dramatic portrayal, but also
their honesty in lyrics. Lead singer Ian McCulloch cites Lou Reed as an idol as
well as Bowie. His voice is more of a painful wail than an Ian Curtis drone. Think
of Robert Smith but way better.
The band started to transition into a full force when this
album dropped back in 1981. Other contemporaries like U2, The Psychedelic Furs,
and the Human League all released their sophomore albums to great success, and
each band rode the waves into MTV land, but the one who stayed behind in the
shadows was Echo & The Bunnymen.
What you end up getting is an album more complex, more sophisticated,
and tightly focused. This wasn’t really reaching for the charts (it did become
the bands highest at the time), and it wasn’t trying to fit into a mold. No,
the band seemed to stretch out more and ended up making a weighted record with
depth. There’s a lot to digest and the epic quality of the music is a testament
to that.
Guitarist Will Sergeant is major player in the Post-Punk
scene and highly underrated. His work on the bands early catalogue is very
strong and he should be mentioned in the same conversations as Keith Levene, Bernard
Sumner, Andy Gill, The Edge, and Vini Reilly. Listen to opening track “Show of
Strength†and hear those chords! It’s like a cat’s meow stretched over dub
grooves clanging against a metal shed. Very nice, very quiet, but also very
loud.
Second track "With a Hip" is another example of
Sergeant’s angular playing. He’s not just whipping strokes, but instead playing
with a purpose. The song meshes together with the other member’s forming a
solid track of Post-Punk perfection. This is all a result of the many rehearsals
they did beforehand and how it helped to develop "language" in the
rhythm as stated by bassist Les Pattinson.
Each track feels like a sequestered piece, evoking the
depressing lyrics to a T. They feel cold and wet, lonely and dead (the album
cover is another example). What springs up from it is that hazy majestic beauty
mentioned earlier. There’s a complex machinery of melodies which somehow transcend
the boundaries of rubbish and end up sounding otherworldly. This doesn’t sound try-hard
either which makes it unique. This is what U2 did later with their most well received
albums. They took what sounded like angelic tones and expanded on them making a
trademark. Echo & The Bunnymen did that on their second album. It’s just
that few noticed…
Fifth track “A Promise†was released as the albums only
single and it’s a standout. Just to hit on the lyrics a bit you have lines like:
“You said something will change / We were
all dressed up / Somewhere to go / No sign of rain / But something will change
/ You promisedâ€. Reviewers were right when saying that the album feels grey
and evokes emotions like “detachmentâ€, “Betrayalâ€, and “Hypocrisyâ€.
It’s fitting in some kind of weird way, that the band’s name
starts with the word “echoâ€. Not mentioning the tons of vocal multi-tracking on
the album, but more in the sense of loneliness and yelling out loud to perhaps
no one but yourself. What do you get in the echo back? The exact same thing… “You said nothing will change / We were
almost near / Almost far / Down came the rain / But nothing will change / You
promisedâ€.
Echo & The Bunnymen tried to expand on their sound a bit
more with Ocean Rain, what with it
being recorded with a 35-piece orchestra, and it did help usher them into the
mainstream at the time and also into the new millennium with the now cult
classic film Donnie Darko playing
that one track everyone knows about. But that album shouldn’t be the starting
point! No, Heaven Up Here needs to
be. This is a shining example of a great band perfecting their sound. This was
no sophomore slump because they didn’t have to impress anyone else but instead
meet their own interests. They seemed to have done that this time. Heaven Up Here is one of the deep cuts
of the 80’s and those in the know understand it’s status. This is one for the curious
and the dedicated. Dig it…