39. Echo and the Bunnymen - Porcupine (1983)

My house was a good fifteen minute walk to the nearest shop - twenty if I took our lazy dog. The dog’s penance for being disproportionately out of shape for a mammal who appeared to eat only once a day was to be made to spend at least half an hour in the tiny record shop next door to the newsagent’s. The newsagent’s that sold papers, milk and other things that parents are interested in when you are a teenager with legs and an inherent need to get out the house. I didn’t like milk or read the Daily Mirror. Instead, I liked pop music.

I was from Liverpool, Echo and the Bunnymen were from Liverpool but they might as well have been from Akron, Ohio. McCulloch used Coca-Cola to make his hair spiky, Les Pattinson wore Aran jumpers, Will Sergeant had a fringe and, most shockingly of all, drummer Pete de Freitas frequently appeared in public in a leather jacket. I don’t think they even knew who Sergio Tacchini was. But they made pop music, pop music that got them on to ‘Top of the Pops’ and that got me and the dog down to the local record shop to buy ‘The Cutter’ on 12 inch. Despite their fluffy moniker, there was nothing soft about the Bunnymen.

‘Porcupine’ was released with the band at their most commercially successful. ‘The Back of Love’ dented the Top 20 and the follow up ‘The Cutter’ went one better by breaking the Top 10, allowing McCulloch to put in a decidedly odd performance on ‘Top of the Pops’ which he may or may not recall. Ironically, ‘Porcupine’ was their least commercial album, full of multi-tracked weirdness exemplified by the funereal title track. The cover art was shot in Iceland and only helped to amplify the album’s cold aloofness with ‘Gods Will Be Gods’ the aural equivalent of being caught in an avalanche. I loved it - it was arty, difficult but not inaccessible and McCulloch and DeFreitas were two Scouse Fonzies, cooler than anything I could even dare imagine to be. I went to see them live a couple of years later and it is still to this day the best fucking concert I have ever been to.