Echo & the Bunnymen - Porcupine
An unforgettable year saw the magnificent sequence of flamboyant petals come to light, in the wake of an unprecedented musical stylistic progression: from pop, to rock, to blues, to soul, to post-punk, it's all a display of gems in search of a freeze, for when miracles happen, they must be preserved, in the majestic cycle of eternity.
Liverpool, dishonest and rude city par excellence, kept handing out bands as gangs capable of scratching good manners, both moral and musical. The Echo & the Bunnymen were the most gifted but, indeed, disorderly: following their instincts they had been able to generate enthusiasm, but from the point of view of concreteness they struggled because great songs (which were certainly not lacking in their abacus) were not enough. Here they consequently 'used' 1983 to deliver an unexpected blow: three powerful, overbearing singles, emissaries of a work that would arrive shortly and that would shock and disappoint fans and many insiders. He is wrong, we are human, but for the Old Scribe in this case everything is unacceptable, because Porcupine is the diamond in the covert strategy: it takes a long time to assimilate the different parts of it and to be able to appreciate the first, sensational time when the design made them minstrels with the hands and tools of architects trying to build different scaffolding, to throw years of black misery into the void and create a knockout blow, dyeing their musical fabric with psychedelia and that Asia that was so much in the face of the Byrds and Beatles in the 1960s. The sounds, which were the preserve of a suffocating opacity, in these ten tracks visit territories where rainbows are not lacking. Ian, the miraculous voice that has emerged unscathed from the most devastating vices, here performs his ballistic masterpiece: he sings as if immersed in the dew of small nocturnal movements, opening his heart wide, trusting himself totally to the project. Ballads and bursts of watts, swirling poems, images like pictures enraptured by inconceivable ecstasies, made possible an attraction to places never previously visited. The shorter A-side, however, contains the song with the longest duration (the title track). Side B is the one where the experiments are under the light of a machine gun firing blanks, conceding, however (thank you guys), tons of suffering within guitar riffs and dank bass lines, to explore a desert in which to try and sow the flowers of a pop that was beginning to become irresistible. There was to beat and knock down the dear enemies U2, by now with War set to take spaces that Ian and associates did not want to concede. No, no stylistic compromise, but a decisive turn, at times bloody. Just listen to the second part of the song Porcupine to realise that those eight hands had by then decided to turn brown, grey and yellow, with their souls still leaning towards the territories so precious to the Sound and the Cure, the only two bands that in that year still knew how to grip the wrists of every listener. Madonna, Prince and other crowd charmers were charting a course in which the clear, bright, visible side could be caressed and shared with a numerically very large mass of people. It was certainly not the so-called alternative artists who were making the best music, but they were certainly the ones from whom one would expect products capable of building margins of safety within listening and preferences.
What makes up this album is a radio-friendly approach, a balanced malleability towards a more disparate reception box than previous works. This explains the guitar that is definitively more concentrated towards funky rhythms, the entry, for the first time, of the acoustic guitar and, at the same time, the violin, which will determine an elasticity and the intention to change the role of residence of the songs: the centre of gravity is shifted to the East and the rock that can be heard is that of isolated but no longer desolate streets. The bitterness in the mouth of existence here does not seek a lament (Robert Smith and Peter Murphy still insist on this), but rather a picture to be left hanging on the notice board, possibly to be hidden away quickly. You listen to songs that are the moulting of souls travelling towards mental undressing, to carve a flag in the stone of history: that of the difficulty of being citizens of a historical moment that dries up the wings and kisses only those who wear masks. The rhythms become more complex, the verses are filled with symbols, through arrangements in which Les Pattinson's bass illuminates all, without ever hesitating. Crumbs of what the Banshees did in 1982 appear in the second side, but we are at decidedly higher levels here: we soar into the obscene flight of a psychedelia that paralyses the now saturated and weak post-punk classicism.
The turbulence of the four is immobilised, thrown into a sound material with the fairy breath of angels relegated to the planet Earth. Double vocals, overdubbed guitars, epic refrains (stadiums for some of them would have been the perfect living room), melodies closer to the shores of California, without any hesitation. Lacking in this work is the presumption, the violent quest to stretch out in time what works, and this is a true miracle because it brings them closer to the sense of the singles, of those 45s that guaranteed more accessible listening. It is not a concept album, it is not a collection of beautiful musical notes. Rather Porcupine is a sacrifice, wonderful and elastic, to bring the line-up towards the region of awareness. Closer to bands with a new romantic breath than post-punk, the four from Liverpool rely on a producer with whom they had already collaborated, but changing their approach and working method: for each song, the decision was made to spend the time necessary to conclude it, and then move on to the next. It is not difficult, listening to it well, to hear the continuity, the different sounds for each song, like a cluster of identities forced to live inside the same body. It was precisely this element that made it unique, not dispersive, problematic because it was full of new and unexpected mixtures. In addition: what was emerging in 1983 was a clear split; musical genres and behavioural attitudes increasingly fragmented, but consciously wishing to split the world. Even Echo & The Bunnymen wanted to, but refrained from falling into the trap of a simplicity that would have rendered sterile their presumption, which, it must be acknowledged, has made them unique and impressive. The musical language seems suspended on the edge of a dream, where time is a meteor with the handbrake pulled. Only Southern Death Cult, at the time, had the same amount of overconfidence, the same sanguine colour, the impetus of those who, writing fiery petals on a pentagram, rose from the ground. And that is where you have to go to hear these compositions in their full meaning: to the place where rationality becomes guilty of a useless virginity. For indeed, these songs are guilty of guilt, having the courage to write lyrics, on Ian's part, that precisely induce one to abandon all conscious thought. Three singles full of immediacy that seem to clash with the other seven tracks: in this game with mirrors invaded by grey, their courage and unquestionable annexation to the spectacularity of a pop that expands the lungs within their needs shines through. The mood is frozen, buried by images in which the approach is to bypass the waves of the ocean (The Cutter) and make us all become accomplices in majestic, flowing deceptions. This is a vital aspect of 1970s British psychedelia. From this work onwards, one can hear big wall of sound by the guitars, less arpeggios, but with the same attitude as the Chameleons to create walls of sound, in which the mass of changes and overdubs wins rather than volume. New effects appear, to illuminate the snake the four of them were holding in their hands: the diabolical project of reaching new people through the less flashy but still sequin-filled door. As if glam was present in the reflections more than in its specific musical characteristics. For the first time, echoes and reverberations are conspicuous in all the songs: pay attention to this aspect, as very quickly this very choice will kill them. But in this context everything is functional, oiled and able to make the liquid of talent flow towards perfection.
What makes it the best of their discography is one thing: its being intimate and personal, as it never was before, as it never will be again. The Liverpool leprechaun opens his drawers where, more than dreams, one can find magnetic plots, approximations, confusions and the acute skill of writing that complicates the process of understanding. Ian locks up the mysteries but lists them, like a magician gone mad under the effects of delusions at high temperature, in constant boiling, like a musical farmer who sows without caring to check if he is doing it in the right way. During the song Clay one can hear the influences of the Banshees, it is undeniable, but then the guitar of that genius Will Sergeant takes everything to the far east, chilling and leaving the drums in the vicinity of Joy Division. Inspiration, here able to be at the service of the projectuality I have already mentioned, is just a bricklayer with bricks in his hands laden with dust, with boredom, with gestures to be made in order to pile it all up inside the Porcupine house. It hurts this album, slamming the mood inside the bubble of uncertainty and whipping the gothic proceeding of the band's contemporaries: as if there was a big dump where to deposit the flooded structures of a system now smelling of death and approximations. Bauhaus died, the Cure went backwards, U2 threw their God-given gift to the nettles, the Sound buried their now-bound enthusiasms at the Indian sacrifice stake, and it was the turn of the four citizens of Beatles City to look for a different operating system. Take Higher Hell: Chameleons and Sound kissing each other on the mouth, but then, when the bass comes in, the story suddenly knows something new that, believe me, has created a remarkable impact for the bands that came after. Will's scratching becomes elegant, less showy, Ian sings like a fourth-year schoolboy, and the drumming is finally able to close the doors on the simple four-quarter. A chisel, a screwdriver, a shear and a watering can appear, to draw stratocumulus with a tail full of wind: nothing will return, Porcupine makes men's minds migrate before musicians do. A testament album, the sign of a remarkable ability that was looking for a classroom to teach the deaf. If one listens to Gods Will Be Gods, one hears the post-punk impulses but compressed, put to bed, seduced by the guitar that sounds like a sitar and then the chords of the acoustic one to extinguish the ardours and show a new sky, completely cleared...
Cheerfulness is not banished, on the contrary, it appears and reigns not at all in solitude: no compromise but an artifice to bring different moods into conversation and play with possibilities. A kaleidoscope, a merry-go-round within a cemetery, a working day within an embrace, faith within the avalanche of lightness.There are no conspicuous distances with the debut album: listen to the guitar progressions, the metrically precise singing, the nuances of the rhythms, and you will realise that what is missing is only a nihilistic nature that has been, thank God, anaesthetised. Growth is also well understood in dividing the work into six parts: two on side A and four on side B. In what way? By amalgamating the melodic lines and rhythms into precise sections, giving the solos the ability and opportunity to better hear the arrangements and guitar playing, here more subtle and less redundant. It is worth mentioning My White Devil: gloomy in its initial procession almost full of firecrackers muffled by a woollen blanket, being skilful then in becoming a moving ballad, leading us into the dreams of a devil in search of human souls. It is a resounding example of how one can ride the imagination while carrying the right experimental structures, through rhythm and instrument changes, all in a truly impressive chorus. A xylophone stuffed with magic almost makes us feel the devil as a friend: the Bunnymen's mastery also lies in these games that amaze the listener.
Porcupine is a journey without wheels, into the silent desert of heaven. At the moment when musical history was breaking its legs, they turned on their wings and took us to touch infinity...
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
9th June 2023
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