Porcupine

The working title was The Happy Loss. The band found it hard to write after Heaven Up Here, amid heavy touring and tension, and a Scottish tour in April 1982 did not mend relations. Pete de Freitas said it was difficult to write and record, unlike the spontaneous Heaven Up Here. Two tracks from a John Peel session were re-recorded and retitled Higher Hell and The Back of Love. WEA rejected the first version as too uncommercial, so the band re-recorded it with strings by Shankar, which produced The Cutter. The band agreed to re-record the entire album, over Sergeant's objections, and manager Bill Drummond brought in Shankar. Pattinson was openly weary of the industry, and McCulloch later called the mood at the time horrible.

The singles were The Back of Love (UK 19), The Cutter (UK 8) and the non-album Never Stop (Discotheque), which reached 15. The album reached 2 in the UK, 137 in the US and 15 in New Zealand, and went Gold in 1984. A 2003 remaster added seven bonus tracks.

Reviews at the time were mixed: Barney Hoskyns in the NME felt the second side lacked inspiration. Later writers were warmer. AllMusic called it arguably the band's darkest offering, and Pitchfork gave it 9.2, calling it the band's definitive statement. Melody Maker placed it ninth on its 1983 year-end list. It is also in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

In his 2004 Pitchfork review of the reissues, Joe Tangari called The Back of Love the astonishing highlight of the group's career, praising the frenetic drumming, laser-focused bass and Sergeant's choppy, delayed guitar chords. He described The Cutter as one of their best singles, with weird, elastic synthesizer melodies, and said the album was not even released in the United States at first. The Guardian gave the reissue four stars and said the murkiness that used to envelop the record had been blown away. The cover photograph, of the band at a frozen waterfall in Iceland, continued the elemental series.