Apples for Isaac starts to find its listeners

Early notices call the thirteenth studio set tender and uplifting. McCulloch produced; Clem Burke played on ten tracks and died during the sessions.

Eight days after it reached the shops, Echo & the Bunnymen’s thirteenth studio album is no longer an announcement. Apples for Isaac, out since 18 September, has moved into the space where records are heard rather than trailed, and the first wave of notices has settled on a clear description: a tender yet uplifting return that holds darkness and optimism in the same frame.

It is the band’s first collection of new material since Meteorites in 2014. Ian McCulloch produced the set. Ten of its eleven tracks feature drums by Clem Burke, the Blondie drummer and longtime friend of McCulloch. Burke died during the sessions while the album was being finished. The band’s tribute left little room for doubt about what he meant to the sessions: “The mighty, legendary Clem Burke—longtime friend of Mac—was integral to the making of the album and heartbreakingly passed away during its completion… love you Clem X”.

From Crocodiles to a thirteenth studio set

The release closes a long studio silence for original songs, but it does not arrive without a deep catalogue behind it. Echo & the Bunnymen formed in Liverpool in 1978 around McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bassist Les Pattinson; Pete de Freitas was in place on drums by 1980. The early run still defines how the group are placed in British rock: Crocodiles in 1980, Heaven Up Here in 1981, Porcupine in 1983 and Ocean Rain in 1984 built a sound that mixed post-punk bite with a melodic reach few of their peers matched. Compilation and live chapters followed across the decades, among them Songs to Learn & Sing, later live sets from 2017, the John Peel Sessions archive, and anniversary editions including the 25-year treatment of Evergreen in 2022.

What the 2010s did not yield in volume of new studio writing, the band partly answered with The Stars, The Oceans & the Moon in 2018 and related work around The Killing Moon. None of that replaced a full album of fresh songs. Meteorites remained the last such statement until this month. Apples for Isaac therefore sits less as a casual addition than as the point at which the Bunnymen write a new chapter rather than revisit an old one.

The songs, the formats, the tone

Lead single Brussels Is Haunted opened the campaign in July, paired with an animated video. The finished tracklist runs Take Me By The Hand, Can’t Be Sold, Brussels Is Haunted, I’ll Be Your Sunshine, Hijacked, The Honey, Unstoppable Force, The Light That Surrounds You, Lab Rats Ran, Asimov and We Prayed In The Dark.

That practical detail matters less than the shape the record is already being given in print. A group whose classic work never chose gloom at the expense of lift, or lift at the expense of shade, is being heard again in those terms. McCulloch’s production keeps the emphasis on voice and song after twelve quiet years between albums of new material. Burke’s presence on ten tracks gives the sessions a finished identity that the band have refused to soft-pedal.

Where the album lands with listeners who grew up on Ocean Rain, and with those meeting the Bunnymen only now, is the question the next weeks will answer. The record is out. The writing and the playing are no longer prospective; they are on the shelf, and the conversation has shifted from the wait to the work.