Echo And The Bunnymen* – Heaven Up Here

An incredible and often overlooked album, simply because it didn't fit the stadium rock pomp of the time. Heaven Up Here has got it all - dramatic guitar crescendos (Over the Wall) hypnotic, moody introspection (The Disease) and haunting pyschedleic folksy chants ('All My Colours') - backed up by some of the greatest drumming ever heard. To my mind, Heaven is EATB's career highlight and an absolute gem. Seek it out.

As others have said, a dark and dense album, but it's never really gloomy - there's too much melody and passion for that. It takes you down, but brings you right back up again. It took a few plays to hook into - The Disease, All My Colours and Over The Wall were the ones that stuck first, then, without knowing why, you're dancing up to people waving your arms and singing "with a hip-hip-hop and a flip-flap-flop, gonna steal some bananas from the grocer's shop," in their faces with manic glee. This album came in for amount of slagging at the time and accusations of being pretentious and up its own arse, but it's just full of weird, wired passion. The drums of course are off the scale good - De Freitas was untouchable. Mac's at full stretch lyrically, pulling some kind of crazy sense out of his seemingly fritzed oddball imagery. Pattinson's lyrical groovy bass drives the tunes along allowing Will Sergeant the freedom and room to add the harsher angles, throw in the eastern flourishes and generate the atmosphere. This is one of those records where the vibe of the cover just sums the whole damn thing up. Recommended listening on headphones for lone walks on cold beaches at sunset when you're just not sure if it's really the wind that's making your eyes water.

I suggest all versions of cd 2292-42317-2 made in Europe be merged into one as they are all the same release.

It's in Tony Fletchers' book 'Never Stop'. While on tour the band found out that the wrong mix was used. The band ordered that all copies should be destroyed. But a few months later Will found a copy in Austria with the same -wrong- mix. The record company just sent the records over to a foreign country instead of destroying them.

I've heard a tale of an alternate, unapproved mix of Heaven Up Here that was released in Italy (?) and quickly recalled and replaced with the mix that the band had approved. I've never been able to find any evidence of this online or anywhere else. Anybody have any information on this?

Quite simply the greatest album ever made.
A ridiculous statement of course but proof, if it were needed, that objective reviews of a subjective medium - music - are essentially futile. Commercially, the least successful Bunnymen album, the least accessible and pretty much dark from start to finish. Not a saccharine Lips Like Sugar or a singalong Seven Seas in sight. Not much going for it then. But slowly the melodies appear through the dark and edgy atmosphere. A difficult listen? Maybe. But nothing worth having ever came easy. Heaven Up Here is the Bunnymen at their peak - a peak only matched by the Oxfam sales of second-hand overcoats, tartan shirts and skinny young men in moccasins and no socks.
To the come all ye faithful there is no other. It’s Heaven Up Here after all.
Sounds ridiculous. Yep.
Still the greatest album ever made though 😉

Sparse and simple, but as a whole it moves and flows like an excellent album is supposed to. A minor masterpiece, alongside many of the year 1981, a particular good vintage of popular music. The cover artwork is ace too.