Heaven Up Here by Echo and the Bunnymen

Heaven Up Here, Echo & the Bunnymen's second album, came out on Korova in May 1981, and it's a darker, stormier beast than Crocodiles. The Liverpool band, Ian McCulloch on vocals, Will Sergeant on guitar, Les Pattinson on bass and Pete de Freitas on drums, holed up at Rockfield Studios near Monmouth in Wales and co-produced it with Hugh Jones, and they came out with a record that sounds like weather: Sergeant's guitar slashing and shimmering, de Freitas pounding out tribal rolls, and McCulloch crooning and howling like the last romantic on a windswept pier.

"A Promise" and "Over the Wall" were the singles, the latter a slow, brooding build that erupts into full gale. It gave them their first UK Top 10 album, peaking at number 10, and their first foothold in America. It won Best Album and Best Dressed LP at the 1981 NME Awards, and Rolling Stone later ranked it among the 500 best records ever made.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.