tracks on LP: The Cutter | Back Of Love | My White Devil | Clay | Porcupine | Heads Will Roll | Ripeness | Higher Hell | Gods Will Be Gods | In Bluer Skies
Record label: Korova KODE6
Released: 04/02/83
Borrowed: 23/03/84 (Keith Lowery)
Quiller On The Rampage
Echo and the Bunnymen | Porcupine | (Korova) 1983 | ‘Porcupine’ is a supremely frustrating album. Frustrating in that the promise of its best founders on the awful sham of its excesses.
Echo and the Bunnymen are found guilty, far too often, of the worst kind of progressive rock indulgence, the laziest construction of false mystery. The real shame of the matter is that so much here is waste – and that’s a pity, ‘cos when the Bunnymen are good, they are very good.
Take “Heads Will Roll” for instance, beautifully proportioned song, each instrument neatly combining to produce a slowly curling, sublimely seductive whole. Those Indian violins are perfect and Mac’s voice is a pert punctuation rather than a brusque exclamation.
But elsewhere the Bunnymen are lax, ill disciplined and apt to indulge their leader’s sixth form poesy. The title track sees Mac, TS Eliot in hand, Leonard Cohen on the brain, getting all maudlin over a backing track that sounds like it’s been constructed by a bunch of fidgety buskers on speed. I’m sure it’s very meaningful darling, but I wish Mr McCulloch would spend more time on the perfection of his hairdo and less dredging the notepad scribbles of his schooldays.
In the final analysis the Bunnymen’s weakness lies in their lack of direction and discipline. Too often their songs are overlong and melodramatic. Yet when some form is imposed, some guidelines laid down, they are capable of beautiful, clear and incisive music.
If the Bunnymen can resolve these difficulties, they’ll be ready to make the kind of LP they’ve always promised. If they don’t? . . . well look what happened to Julian’s boys. +++ (Record Mirror, February 1983)
No great departure from previous Bunnymen strategy here, except in those instrumental interludes involving a tip of the turban towards The Mysterious East.
At heart this is simple music, gaining its brooding force from the sheer concentrated power generated by Mac’s warning voice as it looms through layers of guitars and purposeful percussion.
Already it’s starting to take a firm grip on the turntable. I had just this trouble with the other two . . . (8 out of 10) (Smash Hits, February 1983)
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