462. Echo And The Bunnymen - Crocodiles (1980)
















Track Listing

1. Going Up
2. Do It Clean
3. Stars Are Stars
4. Pride
5. Monkeys
6. Crocodiles
7. Rescue
8. Villiers Terrace
9. Read It in Books
10. Pictures on My Wall
11. All That Jazz
12. Happy Death Men

Review

Yesterday it was The Cure today it is Echo and this is great! Again just like with Seventeen Seconds this is not the best of all Echo albums but that is splitting hairs because their stuff is just generally amazing and this is no exception.

Echo and the Bunnymen was one of those bands I discovered about 5 years ago and has since become one of my top five bands of all time, and when I say 'the four from Liverpool' this is the band I mean. That has also led me to the conclusion that Echo are probably one of the most underrated bands in the world, while many bands which were kind of obscure have received their deserved recognition (i.e. Joy Division) the same is not true of Echo. And it should be!

This album is a great way to start listening to them, and one of the best debut albums on the list, they would eventually reach perfection with Ocean Rain, but this is a 10 just the same.

Track Highlights

1. Rescue
2. Villiers Terrace
3. Pride
4. Pictures On My Wall

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Echo & the Bunnymen’s critically-acclaimed debut single “Pictures on My Wall”, was released on Bill Drummond's Zoo in May 1979, the B-side being the McCulloch/Cope collaboration “Read It in Books” (also recorded by The Teardrop Explodes approximately six months later as the B-side of their final Zoo Records single “Treason”). In two Echo and the Bunnymen biographies Never Stop (1987) and Turquoise Days (2002), McCulloch has denied that Cope had any involvement with the writing of this song. As it's now over twenty years after the event, this case will most likely never be proved one way or another, but the "Read It In Books" saga does provide a fascinating insight into the depth of the dysfunctional McCulloch/Cope relationship.

By the time of their debut album, 1980’s Crocodiles, the drum machine had been replaced by Trinidad-born Pete de Freitas, and a single, “Rescue”, climbed to UK #62 and following critical acclaim, the album broke into the Top 20 at #17.

Rescue: