Pitchfork

So what kind of drugs do you think it was? I only ask because it seems fairly obvious that Echo & The Bunnymen were a band christened during a period of impaired judgment. I can see it sounding funny on a drunk Saturday evening, but to seriously go through with it and start releasing albums under the name The Bunnymen (Echo was their drum machine) is just beyond reason, not only because it's a silly name, but because it's a name that engenders skepticism immediately when you say it. I can't count the number of times I've found myself saying, "No, seriously, they're really quite good once you get past the name," to someone unfamiliar with their work. And the fact is, they really were a good band in their day (and actually still are in their reconstituted form today), but it's hard to find anyone who really takes them all that seriously.

Granted, there are reasons aside from their moniker that people might shy away from Echo & The Bunnymen. Ian McCullough's (melo)dramatic, psychedelic crooner vocals and frequent forays into quasi-religious lyrical imagery are something you just have to accept without overthinking it, but the fact is that this band made that kind of stuff sound great. The Liverpool quartet created an absolutely huge sound on record to match their frontman's flair for grandiosity, and they bore it to you on the backs of bassist Les Pattinson and drummer Pete DeFreitas, a rhythm section whose sheer power and imagination is chronically overlooked.

Listening back to the band's five original albums on Rhino's excellently remastered reissue series in an age when rhythm is returning to the fore of the underground, it's hard not to notice just how charged and visceral some of these records were. The epitome is "Back of Love", from 1983's Porcupine, an album that initially wasn't even released stateside, but in hindsight proves to be the band's definitive statement. "Back of Love" is simply the astonishing highlight of the group's career, featuring frenetic drumming, laser-focused basswork and Will Sergeant's choppy, heavily delayed guitar chords. The way the music drops out of the treble range and yields to a deep, miles-thick synthesizer groan behind McCullough's frantically shouted chorus is disorienting and breathtaking-- it's an anthem for adrenal glands.

Porcupine was loaded with songs like that, unfolding with the cascading stomp of "The Cutter", one of the band's best singles with its weird, elastic synthesizer melodies. While it showcases some of The Bunnymen's most aggressively rhythmic material, though, Porcupine also houses its share of strange, abstract material such as the title track and "My White Devil", songs that lurch on Spartan rhythms and mix disparate textures like Spanish guitar and cravenly artificial synthesizer, a fact that's led many to inaccurately characterize the album as the band's "difficult" record, something it's really not.

Of course, it's not as straightforward as its two predecessors, 1980's Crocodiles and 1981's Heaven Up Here. The Bunnymen hit the ground running, and their debut album is a stunning statement of purpose, with McCullough already in full dramatic swing and the band at their most straightforward-- any band that uses as much reverb as this one is hard to label "raw," but "Pride" and "Do It Clean" nonetheless hit hard, and "Rescue", with Sergeant's massive opening riff, manages to turn a chorus that should sound like a plea into a rallying cry. Heaven Up Here ranges more widely, and makes motions toward the slightly funkier band that turned up on Porcupine on the aptly titled "Show of Strength" and "With a Hip", while also stretching out their theatrical side on the slow-burning, flute-laden "All My Colours" (also frequently referred to as "Zimbo" for McCullough's weird, droning nonsense refrain).

The Bunnymen mellowed to a degree for their fourth album, the widely acclaimed Ocean Rain, but all it did was cause them to get weirder. The album is stuffed with queasy midtempo tracks and bizarre orchestration, but it's by no means impenetrable. The strangest song, "Yo Yo Man" limps through skewed verses, building to McCullough's refrain, "I'm the yo yo man/ Always up and down," which triggers a startling interjection by vigorously bowed strings, percussion and Sergeant's spastic guitar. Most of the album is considerably less warped, but a chilly, haunted ambience settles over the whole recording like a fine dust.

The creative strain of recording Ocean Rain took a lot out of the band, and it took them three years to deliver a follow-up, in the form of their self-titled record, which is as odd a collision of commercial sensibility and inescapable weirdness as you're likely to find. The band's attempt to reach a wider audience worked out when they splattered the hook-heavy reverb bomb "Lips Like Sugar" all over American college radio, but the backward guitar solo on "Lost and Found" is more representative of the album as a whole. The sunnier production watered the band's sound down a bit, but they still managed to turn out "All in Your Mind", a throbbing beast of a pop song swimming in twitching guitar and aggressive synth bass, and god, that is so obviously Ray Manzarek of The Doors playing organ on "Bedbugs and Ballyhoo" that you don't even need the liners to clue you in-- it works almost purely on improbability.

The folks at Rhino have done an admirable job of expanding each album to include relevant bonus material, trucking out standout B-sides "Fuel" and "Angels & Devils" and some bone-crushing early live tracks, but they've also somehow managed to leave off "The Puppet" completely, and non-album singles "Never Stop" and "Bring on the Dancing Horses" are represented in atypical versions, which smacks of needless obscurantism. Still, these albums deserved another look, and the reissues offer a good one. If you've never heard The Bunnymen before, their career overview, Songs to Learn & Sing, is still the best introduction, but you can't go too wrong diving right into Porcupine. Either way, The Bunnymen are a band worth exploring-- you know, once you get past the name.