Customer Reviews

Ocean Rain

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Beautifully constructed, this is by far the best work Echo and the Bunnymen ever did. This album seeps into your pores like thick honey and coils into your heart and your brain until it's lodged in and found a home. The music from a band at their creative peak, the songs range from haunting ("Eternal Me" "Ocean Rain"), hopelessly upbeat ("Silver"), to songs that still make me cry ("Killing Moon"). One of those (sadly) rare albums without a weak song, this is a MUST have for anyone who lived through 80's, for all the nostalgia about Culture Club, Wham, and Kajagoogoo, Echo and the Bunnymen's "Ocean Rain" is the real deal and proof that music of importance and staying power came out of that time.

My fellow bay-area banshee-esqe counterpart below hit the nail on the head with this one.

This is my favorite amongst favorites of Echo & the Bunnymen releases. It is completely beautiful, acheiving such incredible melodies and lyrics that it is almost beyond words.

I guess I can best sum it up in the following way: I remember, at the time, I was living in San Jose, Ca. I was watching MTV (remember when it was decent...Kevin Seal on 120 minutes and such?), and on came MTV news...the latest word...drummer Pete de Frietas of Echo and the Bunnymen was dead. Hit by a truck while riding to the market on his motorcycle. He is survived by his wife and child.

It cut like a knife. I was a (young) teen, hooked on Echo, Smiths, New Order, Cure and the like. These guys don't die...do they? Ah, there's the rub.

So, without further ado, I reached for my "Ocean Rain" cassette, temporarily passing up the poignancy of "All my Life" on the self-titled tape. The music and lyrics touched my soul at that moment in such a way that I can barely describe it. Yet, sitting here in my office, over ten years later, I can feel it and recollect it as if it was yesterday.

Get this beautiful cd if you don't already have it. You will love it.

In closing, and in effort to try to not make this review too much like something out of the "All Men Have Secrets" book on The Smiths, anyone remember seeing Echo and the Bunnymen with New Order and Gene Loves Jezebel? ....1987-ish....Berekly, CA? Amazing...

Ocean Rain is, in my opinion, the best Echo & The Bunnymen album. When you listen to it, it's hard to believe that it was originally released in 1984. Even more difficult to believe is that this album is every bit as cool today as it was almost 20 years ago.

The lyrics, coupled with the music, lead the listener on a journey that takes them to strange and beautiful places. The album as a whole is beautiful, ethereal, melodic, original, and poetic. What is amazing is that it manages to be all of these things without sounding pretentious.

The absence of synthesizers sets it apart from other new wave albums. You can actually hear instruments being played--like the cello, piano and drums. Anyone familiar with music from this era knows how impressive that, in and of itself, is.

I really love the lyrics on this album. For example, there is Silver-- "Just look at you, with burning lips, you're living proof of my fingertips" Another great line, "Take me internally, forever yours, nocturnal me" (from Nocturnal Me) And, one of my favorite's, "Froze to the bone in my igloo home, counting the days till the ice turns green."

There are good albums and then there are great albums. This is one of the great ones because it excels on many levels. It has strong lyrics, catchy melodies, appropriate vocals and of course originality.

I highly recommend it to anyone who used to own this album and sort of remembers liking it, anyone who enjoys 80's new wave music, or anyone looking for a truly great album that will transport their soul every time they play it. Incidentally, if you want to purchase an Echo & The Bunnymen album and you're not sure which one to get, get this one! :)

This is the fourth and last in the Bunnymen's right-out-of-the-box string of four classic albums - actually probably the one most consider their finest. Critics split between this and Crocodiles. Fans split between this and Heaven Up Here. I LOVE this album, actually all four, but I find Heaven Up Here the Bunnymen and the whole post punk genre's definitive masterpiece.

This album is Mac's greatest triumph IMO. All of the songs are acoustic based, which means Mac probably wrote them (though the whole band gets songwriting credit as usual, quite classy). All of them are great, and they include undeniably, undeniably one of the best songs of all time, the Killing Moon - I defy you to listen to it and list another song that is clealy better. He also was able to out Jim Morrison the original Jim Morrison, his idol, on record in Thorn of Crowns. The whole album revolves around Mac and he fills the role effortlessly. He is at once his most charasmatic and personal, a tremendous feat and tremendous joy to the listener as Mac is one of the all-time great frontmen. The supporting cast is great too, fitting their new roles perfectly, esp. Will. He has always almost preferred a Robby Krieger type of role. His presence is unmissable and adds to the album immeasurably

I think the song Yo Yo Man sums this album up best - "I'm the Yo Yo Man, always up and down." Lyrics like that can't be thrown away. The whole album is mood swing after mood swing - with by far the most optimistic Bunnymen songs up to that point (Silver, Crystal Days, Seven Seas) and some pretty depressing points (Killing Moon, Nocturnal Me, etc.). I gotta say I feel it.

All in all, a great album to buy. Bunnymen mood along with incredibly accessible songs. A true triumph.

My first Bunnymen album was Porcupine, which I immediately fell in love with. After that, I went out and purchased their self-titled 87' release which was such an enormous disappointment. It had none of the magical atmosphere of Porcupine. But I didn't give up. I made sure to get an earlier work, and settled on Ocean Rain. I was so relieved. Its just as good as Porcupine, and some feel its their best. The entire album has such an ethereal, other-worldly quality to it, which is what this band always did best. After this release, their music tragically developed a kind of permanent blandness. Wish I could explain what happened.

I never thought I would be an Echo & the Bunnymen fan. I always used to laugh at their name. But, after reading more and more about them, I decided to check out this album, "Ocean Rain." Now, mind you, I am a fan of 80s music, and the "80s underground" sound. Echo very much fits into that genre and sound, but there's so much more to them, as proven by "Ocean Rain."

The album begins with the languid "Silver" and ends with the swirling title track, and between it all is one of the most original sounding albums I have ever heard. It is like Echo picked up where The Beatles and The Doors left off, and added some New Wave texturing and in the midst of it all, created their own sound. "The Killing Moon" is now one of my favorite songs ever, and probably the best they ever recorded. From the squiggling opening guitars, to the colliedeoscopic chorus with orchestral flourishes, it is a complete classic. From the first listen, you will feel like you've heard it before, but never heard anything quite like it. An amazing track. "Nocturnal Me" is similarly spellbinding. It's very bizarre in its orchestral instrumentation and themes. It sounds like Alice In Wonderland on one big drug trip. But it all comes together under Ian McCulloch's brooding bass vocal. "Thorn of Crowns" is another truly great track. Who would've thought that anyone could make an addictive chorus out of the words: "cucumber, cauliflower, memories, april showers." But Echo defies rationality to make this a howling, dark, engaging master stroke.

I could go on and on about everysong. The important thing is that no one before or since has made an album that sounds quite like "Ocean Rain." Sure, some of Siouxsie and the Banshees' and Depeche Mode's stuff of the same time period may sound similar. But none can compare to the swirling, mystical nature of Echo and the Bunnymen's masterpiece, "Ocean Rain."

I LOVE Echo and the Bunnymen. I believe that this is their best album. From the popular 'Killing Moon' to the lullaby of 'Ocean Rain', Ian Mculloch's voice is ethereal and melodic. My other favorites on this album are the intriguing, mystical 'Nocturnal Me', and the pageanistic tale of the 'Yo Yo Man'. If you listen to the lyrics, this album has an otherwordly slant. This is a great cd to listen to at bedtime when the lights are all out. Dream-like and strange,it's a must.

i still remember listening to this with the drummer of a band i was in back in '85, and being completly hooked...from the cover of the album to the sweeping notes of track #1- silver...man, i was hooked. echo...a band that just sounded mysterious...music you could just get lost in....it just sort of had a swirling effect on me...and it still does. nocturnal me, track #2, is so wonderfully complex, you'll hit repeat quite a few times. i've been listening to this album for about 17-years, and it sounds just as good now as it did then. still holds that eerie, mysterious, yet glowingly atmospheric sound that is undeniably echo & bunnymen. great lyrics...great music....great rhythm section...great guitar. trust me, this album will change you.

Echo And The Bunnymen are a gravely underrated post-punk band from Britain, alongside better-known contemporaries such as Joy Division, The Cure, The Smiths, and U2. Their albums had a great deal of influence on the alternative genre, starting back in 1980 with the excellent debut Crocodiles and continuing throughout the '80s.

1984's Ocean Rain was perhaps one of their best releases. Similar to its predecessor Porcupine (which is now back in print as a remaster), Ocean Rain features a gorgeous string section that serves to bolster the four-piece band's sound. Compared the more insular and dark, occasionally bleak previous albums, Ocean Rain is brighter and more expansive (dare I say poppier) yet still cryptic and mysterious. It doesn't "rock" as much as some of their previous work, but Ocean Rain still offers plenty of ear candy.

The lyrics are full of dark romanticism and ambigious imagery, sung to great effect by Ian McCulloch. His voice recalls the deep, brooding timbre of Jim Morrison (The Doors). Will Sargeant's shimmering guitarwork places him in the echelon of excellent post-punk guitarists such as U2's Edge and Joy Division/New Order's Bernard Sumner, while the rhythm section of Les Pattinson (bass) and Pete de Freitas (drums) is tight and fluid. The strings and other instruments (piano and the occasional woodwinds) are beautiful yet never overwhelm the other instruments in the mix.

Some of the Bunnymen's most notable songs can be found here. Silver, Crystal Days, and Seven Seas are all glorious pop gems, while Yo-Yo Man and Nocturnal Me are ominous and memorable. The title track and The Killing Moon rank among the best post-punk tracks ever cut (the latter was featured recently on the Donnie Darko soundtrack, which by the way is an excellent movie). Not all is bliss, however--Thorn Of Crowns is junk, with goofy lyrics and some annoying vocal theatrics by McCulloch, and My Kingdom is a little better but suffers from similar faults. Also the album runs on the short side--skipping over Thorn Of Crowns (like I do) leaves you with only 33 minutes or so of music.

Still, this is a classic album that makes a fine introduction to an overlooked and great band. I reccommend it highly, along with Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, and Porcupine.

I am unsure if it can be said that this is the best Echo and the Bunnymen album, with such classic as Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here, but I would put this on my list of top five albums for the 80s above the rest. The songs are so hook laden you will be singing them for decades. This album weaves a balance between melancholy (Killing Moon, Nocturnal Me) and a wide-eyed hopefulness (Crystal Days, Seven Seas, Silver) that is rare and refreshing. Ocean Rain resonates on a deeper level than most bands ever dream of attempting, let alone accomplishing. The album has a much cleaner feel emotionally than a lot of the bands of the 90s. For me, it is one of the most beautiful and haunting albums ever written.

- st_severin@hotmail.com