Ocean Rain - Reception

Reception

The album was released to mixed reviews. Describing Echo & the Bunnymen's change from the more rock sound of their previous albums to the lighter sound of Ocean Rain, music journalist Max Bell said in his 1984 review for The Times newspaper, "This time vocalist Ian McCulloch has tempered his metaphysical songs with a romantic sweetness and the band's melodies are more to the fore. Acoustic guitars, brushes and sparingly used keyboards all add to the album's optimistic warmth and there is a consistency of atmosphere in songs like 'Seven Seas' and 'Silver', the current single, which justifies the departure."

However, Rolling Stone described the album as "too often a monochromatic dirge of banal existential imagery cloaked around the mere skeleton of a musical idea". Saying that the album had some nifty choruses and nice atmospheres, the review went on to say it "evinces too little melodic development and too much tortured soul-gazing". In his 1984 review for NME, Biba Kopf said, "... Ocean Rain has been designed to buttress the notion of the group's importance. Not unnaturally the results have the opposite effect." He went on to criticise McCulloch's lyrics, which he described as "tired juxtapositions of mysterious buzzwords, nonsense, and banality", and the music, "mellotron-style wash of strings and bleating wood winds".

Ocean Rain reached number four on the UK Albums Chart in its first week of release and stayed on the chart for 26 weeks. In the United States it entered the Billboard 200 at number 172 on 9 June 1984 and stayed on the chart for 11 weeks, reaching a peak of number 87. It entered the Canadian RPM 100 Albums chart at number 89 before it reached a peak of number 41. Staying on the Swedish chart for three weeks the album reached a peak of number 22. As of 1984, Ocean Rain has been certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry for having sold more than 100,000 copies.

Of the singles from the album; "The Killing Moon", which was released on 20 January 1984, reached number nine on the UK Singles Chart and number seven on the Irish Singles Chart; "Silver", released on 13 April 1984, reached number 30 on the UK Singles Chart and number 14 on the Irish Singles Chart; and "Seven Seas", released on 6 July 1984, reached number 16 on the UK Singles Chart and number 10 on the Irish Singles Chart.