Day 217: Echo & the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain

Unfortunately I’m back in an area with steady internet access, but I’ll still keep this one shorter in honour of me still being on easter break. Maybe I’ll work on all of my write-ups being a little bit shorter in the future, but we’ll see how that goes, maybe I’ll get carried away. I’ll see what happens. Anyway, today’s album is by Echo & the Bunnymen.

Echo & the Bunnymen are an English band from Liverpool, formed in 1978 and still going, albeit not with the original line-up. Ocean Rain was the group’s fourth release, which came out in 1984 to mixed reviews and fairly big commercial success. The band themselves were’t lacking in confidence, having announced upon release that it’s the best album ever made – not by them, just in general.

I’d heard “The Killing Moon” in Donnie Darko, like all other people of my generation and ilk, but I’d never listened to the band any more than that. I can’t say I was surprised by any of it, it’s exactly what I expected: moody and melodic post-punk/new wave songs with poetic lyrics that sound very ‘80s, and I mean that in a positive way. The whole album goes by in a flash, it’s one of those that you enjoy listening to right from the first second. They didn’t particularly rock my world, I imagine they could have if I’d heard this in my formative years, but I definitely still enjoyed it.

Also, I was listening to this and thinking about how people who listened to this used to dress in the ‘80s. All I’m saying is people suffering from clinical depression used to have an aesthetic, they’d sing things like “Forever yours, nocturnally”, what are the saddies of today doing? There’s been no innovation in the music or aesthetic to people who want to express that they’re dark and mysterious, goths are still just goths and they seem to sadly be dwindling in numbers. I miss seeing lots of counterculture people roaming the streets, I blame social media for our current monoculture and the youths being unwilling to stand out.

It’s a very good album and I will probably listen to it again. What I like about it so much is the atmosphere they’ve built, it’s slightly gloomy but not depressing, it’s almost that perfect happy/sad thing. Ocean Rain is a very decent 8.5/10.