Echo & The Bunnymen have never been a band that simply continues. They endure, they mutate, they brood, they blaze. And now, twelve years since their last album of new material, they’ve returned with Apples For Isaac — a record that feels less like a comeback and more like a reckoning.
It arrives with the weight of history behind it: the long shadow of Meteorites, the reflective re‑imagining of The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon, and decades of touring a catalogue that has shaped generations. But Apples For Isaac isn’t nostalgic. It’s alive, restless, and touched by something deeper.
Ian McCulloch’s voice — that unmistakable, untouchable instrument — is front and centre. Age hasn’t dimmed it; it’s sharpened it. Across the album’s eleven tracks, he sings like someone who has seen the world’s edges and come back with stories. There’s poetry in the phrasing, bruises in the delivery, and a strange, cosmic tenderness woven through the lyrics.
The band call the album bold, confident, even embracing — and they’re right. There’s a warmth here that sits alongside the Bunnymen’s trademark gloom, a glow beneath the shadows.
One of the album’s most powerful threads is the presence — and absence — of Clem Burke, who plays on ten of the eleven tracks. His drumming is thunderous, elegant, and unmistakably his. The band’s tribute is simple and devastating: “We love you, Clem x.”
His passing during the album’s completion casts a quiet ache across the record. You can hear him in the propulsion of Take Me By The Hand, the pulse of Brussels Is Haunted, the cinematic sweep of The Light That Surrounds You. It’s a final gift from a longtime friend of Mac, and it gives Apples For Isaac a heartbeat that feels both urgent and eternal.
Released alongside the album, Lab Rats Ran is a wiry, shadow‑lit highlight — tense, melodic, and unmistakably Bunnymen. It’s a reminder that even after decades, McCulloch and Sergeant can still conjure that strange alchemy: part post‑punk, part dreamscape, part something entirely their own.
Critics have already responded with enthusiasm — MOJO praising its swagger, Classic Pop calling the band re‑energised, and UNCUT noting the album’s brush with mortality. But the real story is how Apples For Isaac feels: not like a legacy act ticking boxes, but a band still capable of surprise.
There’s brightness in I’ll Be Your Sunshine, menace in Hijacked, widescreen drama in Unstoppable Force, and a haunting beauty in We Prayed In The Dark. It’s a record that moves, shifts, and breathes.
After a run of massive UK and North American shows, the band continue their 2026 journey with dates in Liverpool, London, and Glasgow — including two nights at the Barrowland Ballroom, a venue practically built for their brand of cathedral‑sized melancholy. These shows are celebrations of a band who still command rooms, still draw devotion, still matter.
Formed in Liverpool in 1978, Echo & The Bunnymen have been called post‑punk, new wave, goth, psychedelic — labels that never quite fit. The truth is simpler: they are one of Britain’s greatest rock ’n’ roll bands, and Apples For Isaac is proof that their story isn’t finished.
It’s a late‑career bloom. A tribute. A pulse. A reminder that some bands don’t fade; they deepen.
