Clem Burke's final sessions shape Apples For Isaac

Echo & the Bunnymen have dedicated Apples For Isaac to Clem Burke and confirmed the full tracklist. The album arrives on 18 September via BMG. The late Blondie drummer plays on ten of the eleven tracks on the Liverpool band's first studio album of new material in twelve years.

In a statement, the band said Burke was "integral to the making of the album and heartbreakingly passed away during its completion… love you Clem X". The record is their thirteenth studio album and follows Meteorites, issued in 2014.

A thirteenth album after a long silence

Echo & the Bunnymen formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up brought together vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bassist Les Pattinson; by 1980 Pete de Freitas had joined on drums. The first run of albums — Crocodiles in 1980, Heaven Up Here in 1981, then Porcupine and Ocean Rain — fixed the group's standing in British rock. Compilation and live work continued across the decades that followed, including Songs to Learn & Sing (1985), later live sets from 2017, The Stars, The Oceans & the Moon in 2018, the John Peel Sessions set in 2019 and the Evergreen twenty-five-year anniversary edition in 2022. Against that catalogue, Apples For Isaac is the first full collection of new studio songs since Meteorites, twelve years earlier.

Frontman Ian McCulloch has addressed the length of the wait. He cited Covid and a desire for the lyrics to feel "cryptically important", and said the finished album sounds "how I heard it in my head". That account places the delay not only in circumstance but in the writing itself: the songs were held until the words carried the weight he wanted.

The songs and the formats

Lead single Brussels Is Haunted is already available, paired with an animated video. The complete 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.

Physical and digital editions are available, with bundles offered through the band's store. With nine days to go before the record arrives, the confirmed dedication, the running order and McCulloch's account of the writing give Apples For Isaac its character: a long-delayed studio return whose rhythm section, on almost every song, belongs to a player who did not live to see it issued. What remains is the music itself — eleven tracks, ten of them carrying Burke's parts, and a Liverpool signing day to mark the end of the twelve-year wait.