Reissue of this English band's 2nd album from 1981.

Our take: Rhino Records has been reissuing a bunch of Echo & the Bunnymen albums on vinyl as part of their annual “Rocktober” reissue series. Since we’re big fans of Echo here at SSR and listen to their records all the time in the shop, we grabbed a stack of each of them, since the originals don’t turn up as often as we would like. Here we have Heaven Up Here, Echo’s second album, originally released in 1981. The band emerged from the same Liverpool scene that brought us the Teardrop Explodes, and while psychedelia played a big role in both bands’ music, for their first couple of records, at least, they were riding the post-punk wave. Heaven Up Here might be Echo’s most post-punk album, jettisoning some of the punky poppiness of the first album, Crocodiles, and focusing on a more drum-centered sound that took a lot from Joy Division. While haters might nitpick about Echo copping so much from Joy Division, it’s hard to deny the band could play their asses off and injected heaps of invention and excitement into that framework. The drums are dense, inventive, and sound fucking incredible, while the guitars eschew the rhythmically focused style of many post-punk bands in favor of a melodic, psychedelic maximalism. While the band’s ability to construct a great pop song hadn’t quite hit its peak, as this style of brooding post-punk goes, Heaven Up Here is top shelf.