Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen

Ocean Rain, Echo and the Bunnymen's fourth album, came out on 4 May 1984, and it's where the band traded the post-punk chill for sweep and grandeur. They wrote the songs in 1983, then cut most of the record in Paris early in 1984 with a 35-piece orchestra, with further sessions in Bath and Liverpool, and Gil Norton at the controls.

The strings don't smother the band; they make it seem bigger, stranger, more haunted. The record feels like a sea voyage taken at midnight, all moonlight, candle smoke and melodrama that dares you to laugh and then never gives you the chance. "The Killing Moon" is the crown jewel, a slow, swooning ballad with a sense of fate hanging over every note. "Seven Seas" skips along with a nursery-rhyme brightness, "Silver" swirls and surges, and "Thorn of Crowns" twists into something twitchy and wild.

Critics were split at first, but the album has grown in stature over the years. It reached number four in Britain, went gold there, and crept to 87 in the US, 41 in Canada and 22 in Sweden. Martyn Atkins designed the sleeve with photography by Brian Griffin. The record kept coming back, remastered and expanded on CD in 2003 and again with a live bonus disc in 2008, and that same year the band played it in full in concert with an orchestra behind them.

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