1984 Singles # 5 Echo & The Bunnymen

 

                                                          'In starlit nights I saw you...'

Ian McCulloch apparently thinks that Ocean Rain is better than Hunky Dory, Erm Mac, I'm not quite sure how to put this. OK. No point pussy footing around. It just isn't. There are some records you must retain an innate respect and awe for no matter how happy and proud you are of the ones you come out with and Hunky Dory is one of those.

Don't get me wrong. I love the Bunnymen still. They came along at just the right time for me. I coiled myself around The Back of Love and The Cutter particularly when they were released, burst into the charts like 7 inch literary masterpieces, musical molotov cocktails, and showed up virtually every 45 around them in the Top Forty countdown as underfed and useless. I still find those two songs utterly thrilling. Every time I hear them.

By 1984 McCulloch had seized the controls of the Bunnymen space shuttle. Ocean Rain featured him at the wheel like some Scouse Han Solo with a gravity defying and quite remarkable hairdo, guiding proceedings when Will Sergeant's had probably been the key vision on Heaven Up Here and Porcupine though the Bunnymen had always been a genuine band where each of the four members of the band made a recognisable and signficant contribution to every record.

But Ocean Rain remains divisive among long term Bunnymen fans. many of whom preferred them when they were brittle and existentialist and not meant for genreral consumption and appreciation. A cult concern for sallow teenagers who pretended not even to love their mums or siblings and sulked around in long overcoats all day and refused to look at the lens when family photos were taken, instead staring off to the distant horizon and pretending they were Peter De Freitas. 

Ocean Rain still has icy, angular moments. but despite its poetry is generally accessible and bound for the charts and daytime Radio One play. The cover of Smash Hits and Top of the Pops appearances. It's a record for your younger sister. And I should know. I had and still have a wonderful younger sister,She loved it. And was right too.

Mac is still protective of Ocean Rain because it's his finest moment. He thinks Killing Moon is the finest single ever released, Listen to it, You may nor agree completely. But it's still easy to see why he this it might be, He had one of the finest voices of his generation. Perhaps, along with Billy MaccKenzie the finest. He has every right to his pride.