Echo & The Bunnymen – Crocodiles (1980)

In 1980, the first wave of punk was already a bit old news, but it had given rise to new kind of gothic and dark musical genre called post-punk. Joy Division and The Cure are some early examples. These bands took the simplicity of punk music, but replaced the fast tempos and raw shouts with more controlled rock songs with dark melodies and slightly off-key vocals. Melodic and treble-filled bass lines are also a distinctive feature of this genre. Echo & the Bunnymen is one of the greatest post-punk bands of the early 80's. Their debut album is quite similar to Joy Division's two albums in terms of sounds. Later in their career, the Bunnymen's sounds got richer, but this simplistic debut album is in a way the greatest example from them of what post-punk was all about. These bands started a whole new youth culture as well, which has been imitated over and over again ever since.



If you look at any youth films from the 80's, there are almost certainly some alternative goth kids that are different from the popular jocks and picked-on nerds. The goth kids dress in dark colours, are super sarcastic and don't really care about the conventions around them. This kind of rebel mentality is very cool and I'm sure bands like Echo & the Bunnymen have been a great influence to kids who felt like they didn't belong and who found the conventional capitalist ways of life too restrictive. I have definitely, myself, found these kinds of aesthetics very appealing in my life.

The album starts with a dry rock song Going Up, which is a great example in low-fi aesthetics that the early post-punkers adopted in the 80's. This kind of style must have then also influenced other lo-fi styles later on and helped the emergence of bands such as Guided by Voices and Pavement. Stars Are Stars takes on a slightly more melodic approach and the guitars almost resemble those in old 50's rock n' roll songs. Then again, when the bleak vocals start, you know you're listening to gothic post-punk. Pride sounds like it's been particularly influenced by Joy Division's industrial sounds where echos are restricted only to vocals. Monkeys starts like a hit with it's big guitar riffs, but when the vocals take in, you're back to that dark and melancholic industrial world. The title-track Crocodiles has a faster tempo and it sounds most like the first wave punk bands did. Then again, the sounds are sharper and cleaner and as a result, this song sounds quite a lot like Public Image Limited, another great post-punk band of the time. Rescue has some great rhythms which are almost appropriate for dancing. These kinds of songs gave a birth to indie discos later on, where the goth kids could get wild on the dance floor with their cool music. Rescue is probably the most obvious hit song on the album. Villiers Terrace continues similar kinds of chiming guitars that sound better than the songs on the first half. The piano gives nice change to the soundworld. Pictures on My Wall has some acoustic guitars, but the rhythm and intensity are still quite industrial. All That Jazz is another song with pounding rhythms. This sort of sound has most likely influenced the Madchester scene that came a bit later. The album ends with a slightly psychedelic song Happy Death Men, which reminds me of Bowie's Aladdin Sane's psychedelic parts.

I didn't really know anything about music videos of Echo & The Bunnymen. I did find a video for Crocodiles. The song is a slightly different version than on the album. The video is a hectic fastforward video of the band playing, driving in cars and flying on planes. So, basically I think the video is a typical "Band on tour" type of video.

I found Echo & The Bunnymen relatively late. It wasn't until I was comfortable listening to at least some 80's music that I really got into post-punk properly. I remember borrowing a compilation album Works from a library in Helsinki that included pretty much all of the Echo & The Bunnymen songs and that's when I started to be interested in them. Later on, I have bought a few of their albums that I've found with reasonable prices on vinyl. Crocodales is not quite as melodic as the later albums, which is probably why it took me a bit more time to really start enjoying it. Today, I consider it a very important album for the development of early post-punk sound.

Listen to the album on Spotify.