Echo & Bunnymen - Crocodiles

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Free Music Notes for Crocodiles

Free Music Review: One of the finest debut albums ever recorded...
Hit: 5 Stars

Ian Broudie (Lightning Seeds, Big in Japan- later producer of Porcupine)was the initial producer, the robust version of Pride & classic single Rescue are helmed by him. The rest of the album was recorded at the fabled Rockfield Studios in Wales, & produced by Bill Drummond (Echo&Teardrops manager, late of the KLF) & David Balfe (Teardrop Explodes, later owner of Food Records)- both give the Bunnymen the perfect production. Julian Cope in Head On reveals that he was upset that the trademark Teardrops brass sound got its first outing on record: a Bunnymen record (see the anthemic Happy Death Men- another Camus reference next to those from Smiths Mark E & Robert...).

Going Up is the brilliant opening track, building up from a wall of noise to a pulsing rocker- it is fair to note that The Stone Roses did a very similar thing on their 1989 debut album (also recorded at Rockfield). Next up is one of the Bunnymen's greatest moments- Stars are Stars- a wonderful melancholy with a lead vocal that seems to duet with itself (the same trick is found on the re-recording of Sleeping Gas for Kilimanjaro). Nothing can beat such lines as "I caught a falling star- it cut my hands to pieces". Stars are Stars seems to tie in with the album cover- long coats, autumnal colours- there's a sense of melancholy (which would turn to miserablism on the bleak follow-up Heaven Up Here, an album which veers to close to self pity & the lyrics in Joy Division's Decades rumoured to be about Echo: "Here are the young men, the weight of the world on their shoulders...where have they been?"); it's the good youthful kind though! Pride is good old teen angst, it's easy to see the lineage from Echo to bands like Nirvana & Radiohead here; Monkeys (originally known as Bagsy Yours) has more chiming guitar from Sergeant. A wonderful melancholic anthem, a wonderful sense of space later found on the early recordings of Ride; the title track alternately is almost violent, a slashing rocker with racing pulses as rhythms. "I said "Hey what you doing today?- I'm gonna do it tomorrow!"- the lyrics are justifiably full of it, not many bands could how a candle to this lot at the time.

Villiers Terrace seems to be about that mysterious plain teens enter that centres around hedonism ("mixing up the medicine") & features more keyboards from Balfe- who also features heavily on the re-recorded Pictures on My Wall. Pictures...remains one of the Bunnymen's greatest moments, what Stars are Stars was on the first side, Pictures...was on the second. The album proper than closes on the angular All That Jazz (which has a guitar part remininscent of Joy Division's Digital) & Happy Death Men (which is about as musically adventerous as the band would get till Porcupine).

There are several bonus tracks, though the early takes of Pride & Villiers are of academic interest really; two takes of Simple Stuff is fine, though where is The Puppet? This great song seems to have been disowned, where it once featured as a bonus track on earlier versions of Crocodiles & on compilation Songs to Learn and Sing, it's now vanished from the latest career retro Ballyhoo. Sadly you can only get it on the Crystal Days boxset, which can't be right! Still, it's nice to hear the best version of Read It In Books (aka Books) which was co-written by McCulloch with Julian Cope when they were in The Crucial Three with Pete Wylie. It remains much better than the versions by Teardrop Explodes (on Kilimanjaro) & Julian Cope (as a b-side in the late 80s)Even better is fantastic single Do It Clean, which has a wonderful garage-organ sound- no surprise that the Bunnymen (or what's left of them) still play this...

Finally there are a few tracks from the camo-obssessed Shine So Hard e.p. - pulsing takes of Crocodiles & All That Jazz with two Heaven Up Here tracks Over the Wall & Zimbo (aka All My Colours)- great stuff, though all you need is the original album, Simple Stuff, Do It Clean, Books & the absent Puppet!

Crocodiles remains one of the great debut albums, easily cutting the mustard against such albums as Horses, The Stooges, The Stone Roses & The Modern Dance. A welcome reissue...

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