525. Echo and the Bunnymen - Porcupine (1983)
















Track Listing

1. The Cutter
2. The Back Of Love
3. My White Devil
4. Clay
5. Porcupine
6. Heads Will Roll
7. Ripeness
8. Higher Hell
9. Gods Will Be Gods
10. In Bluer Skies

Review

This album starts off with two amazing songs and unfortunately the rest of the album is not as strong as those two tracks. But this is Echo we are talking about making the rest of the not so amazing tracks still pretty amazing by any other standards.

I love Echo, and this is the second album on the list, the best one is still to come and Crocodiles was also better than this one, but Echo as a band were quite consistently good and so is this album. Ian McCulloch's vocals are becoming more and more operatic and I quite like that, the lyrics keep going in their mix of profundity and nonsense which make them perfect for you to imprint any interpretation you want on them and the sound is as rich as ever.

There is an interesting Eastern vibe to this album, from the opening strains of The Cutter you can tell that in what is almost a throwback to the psychedelic age, Echo have delved into the Asian influence. But then the rest of the sound is unmistakably post-punk, a great album which could have been greater, but none of the songs is a dud, just that some aren't as interesting as the others.

Track Highlights

1. The Cutter
2. The Back Of Love
3. Porcupine
4. Higher Hell

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Porcupine was reissued in 2003/2004 (varying by country) in an expanded and remastered edition, with several bonus tracks. "Fuel" was a b-side of "The Back of Love", tracks 12–16 were early studio recordings, and "Never Stop (Discotheque)" was a non-album single.

The Cutter: