After 12 years without new music, Echo and the Bunnymen return with a timelessly beautiful body of work. ‘Apples For Isaac’ proves that Echo and the Bunnymen haven't lost a step over the years. From the opening bars, the band remains fully in control of the sound they helped define, and they’re still finding new ways to explore it.
The album kicks off with its lead single, 'Take Me By The Hand', which wastes no time making itself known; it's immediate, driving and unmistakably Bunnymen. It’s the sound of a band re-establishing itself in confidence rather than bouncing back cautiously on nostalgia. ‘Can’t Be Sold’ establishes the kind of songwriting that appears less like a throwback and more like proof that the band's sensibilities were built to last.
Then comes ‘Brussels Is Haunted’, another single, a love letter to some of Europe's finest, name-checking Bert Bertrand among many others. However, there is a slight eeriness building, as the lyric “Brussels is haunted by World War Two” changes to “Brussels is haunted by World War Three”, signalling that Brussels is not haunted by its past but by its possible future. Whether it's intended to be interpreted as such or not remains to be seen, but it is a bold moment.
‘I’ll Be Your Sunshine’ pulls the tempo down and gets moody, a melancholic, string-laced meditation presumably about some kind of loss of love. It’s a genuine tonal shift and one of the album's more emotional, raw and exposed moments. ‘Hijacked’ swings the pendulum back the other way with a groovy, riff-driven track and an addictive, repeated guitar solo, and carries more swagger and rougher edges than anything preceding it.
‘An Unstoppable Force’ marks the pivotal point in the album. A mystical, lullaby-like piece that stands in clear contrast to the punchier tracks around it, it gives the record room to breathe before it turns toward its final stretch. That stretch opens with the third single ‘The Light That Surrounds You’, where Ian McCulloch seems to reckon with his own mortality and time’s forward march. However, rather than turning morbid, the song urges listeners to hold onto hope with the lyrics “Stay in the light and bathe in the bright golden rays of a light that has found you”.
The closing track ‘We Prayed In the Dark' brings the album home on an anthemic note, the kind of ending that makes the album feel purposeful and built, not just sequenced.
What's worth singling out about the album is that, amongst all the incredible musicianship on it, ten out of the 11 tracks' drums were played by the late, great Clem Burke, and it shows. There is a real vitality and craft throughout that gives the record added weight, knowing what it represents.
‘Apples For Isaac’ isn't an 80s band coasting on nostalgia, nor is it trying too hard to be relevant in modern society; it is Echo and the Bunnymen doing what they do best, with just enough evolution to keep it feeling vital. A remarkable return.
Mia Samson
Image: ‘Apples For Isaac’ Official Album Cover
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