Echo & the Bunnymen deliver Apples for Isaac at last

The thirteenth studio set arrived in shops on 18 September, featuring Clem Burke’s drums on ten tracks and a July lead single that opened the door after twelve quiet years.

Echo & the Bunnymen released their thirteenth studio album, Apples for Isaac, on 18 September 2026. It is the band’s first collection of new material since Meteorites in 2014, closing a twelve-year gap and adding a fresh studio chapter to a catalogue that began in Liverpool nearly five decades ago.

The eleven-track record was produced by frontman Ian McCulloch. Clem Burke, the Blondie drummer and a longtime friend of McCulloch, drummed on ten of the eleven songs; he died while the album was being finished. The 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. Lead single Brussels Is Haunted was issued in July 2026 alongside the album announcement.

From Crocodiles to a thirteenth studio set

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 as drummer. That group recorded the early run that still defines the band for many listeners: Crocodiles in 1980, Heaven Up Here in 1981, Porcupine in 1983 and Ocean Rain in 1984. Those records fixed McCulloch’s voice and Sergeant’s guitar in the post-punk and alternative landscape of the early 1980s, and the singles that followed carried the same weight on stage and on the radio.

McCulloch and Sergeant remain the core members. In the years after Meteorites the catalogue was kept alive through live sets, session collections and anniversary editions — among them The Stars, The Oceans & the Moon in 2018, the John Peel Sessions 1979-1983 in 2019, and a twenty-five-year edition of Evergreen in 2022. Apples for Isaac follows that stretch of archival and live work as a return to new songs rather than a reissue or a retrospective.

What the new record carries

Early responses to Apples for Isaac have pointed to a blend of upbeat psych-pop, clear David Bowie influences and emotional depth, with McCulloch’s vocals repeatedly singled out. Keeping production in McCulloch’s hands places the record in the same line as the voice that has carried the band from the first Liverpool singles through to this thirteenth studio set. Burke’s presence on ten tracks ties the sessions to a musician whose work with Blondie ran alongside the Bunnymen’s peak years; his death during the album’s completion leaves those performances as a final collaboration with McCulloch and a lasting mark on the finished album.

The record is out now. Beyond the July release of Brussels Is Haunted, no further single or tour plans have been announced. For a band whose first albums still circulate as reference points, Apples for Isaac is the plain fact of new work arriving after a long wait — eleven songs, McCulloch at the desk, Sergeant still at the centre, and Burke’s drums on almost every cut.