There’s always something slightly nerve-racking about putting on a new Echo & the Bunnymen album.
You know what you’re hoping for. Those guitars. McCulloch’s voice. A bit of darkness, a bit of mystery and, somewhere along the way, that feeling you got the first time you heard them.
But you don’t want a band just going through the motions. So I put Apples for Isaac on and tried not to think about the past. That lasted about thirty seconds.
‘Take Me By The Hand’ comes charging in, and there it is. That sound. Will Sergeant’s guitar is doing exactly what it does, McCulloch is sounding weathered but still completely in charge, and there is a rhythm section that gives the whole thing a proper push. It’s not Ocean Rain. Good. It shouldn’t be.
This is a band many years down the road from those records, and you can hear it. McCulloch’s voice has changed, but honestly, there’s something I prefer about it now. More life in it. More experience. You can hear the miles.
‘Can’t Be Sold’ has a real swagger about it, and by this point I’m properly in. No sense of them desperately trying to prove anything. They know who they are.
Then ‘Brussels Is Haunted’ really gets me. This is exactly the kind of Bunnymen song I was hoping for. Dark, slightly strange, full of that guitar sound that seems to just hang in the air long after the note has gone. Sergeant doesn’t need to fill every space. He knows when to let a line sit there and do the work. I hit play on it again. That’s usually when I know a song has got me.
‘I’ll Be Your Sunshine’ shifts the mood and gives McCulloch more room. There’s a vulnerability here that works because it doesn’t feel forced. He’s not trying to sound like the man he was forty years ago. Why would he? None of us are the people we were forty years ago. And maybe that’s exactly what makes this record work.
‘The Honey’ is one of those tracks that sneaks up on you. Catchy, but not obviously so. Gets into your head without becoming annoying. Then ‘Unstoppable Force’ arrives, and the mood shifts again. This is where the age and experience of the band really comes through. There’s weight behind it. You listen to McCulloch singing and you can’t separate the voice from everything that’s happened along the way.
Then you remember Clem Burke is playing on almost the entire album. That changes things. Knowing this became part of Burke’s final work makes the drums hit a little differently. There’s real energy in his playing throughout, and, listening back, you can hear why he was such a natural fit for these songs. It’s a sad thought. But it doesn’t turn the record into some kind of memorial. It’s still a Bunnymen album. And that’s exactly how it should be.
‘The Light That Surrounds You’ is another one I keep returning to. Something about the atmosphere of it just gets under your skin. Then ‘Asimov’ arrives, and I’m suddenly thinking about how few bands can actually make a guitar sound like that.
That’s the thing with Echo & the Bunnymen. You know them. You know the sound. But when they get it right, you still don’t quite know where the next song is going to take you.
When ‘We Prayed in the Dark’ closes things out, the album feels like it’s found its place. And when it finishes, I don’t immediately reach for something else. I just sit there for a minute. For me, that’s what a good album should do.
I’m not going to pretend Apples for Isaac is going to replace the great Bunnymen records. Nothing will do that. Those albums belong to a particular time and mean different things to different people. But this isn’t an attempt to recreate them. It’s something else entirely.
It’s Echo & the Bunnymen now. Older. A little rougher around the edges. Still capable of producing those moments where the guitar catches you and McCulloch’s voice comes through and you think, yeah, that’s them. And that’s enough for me.
After all these years, they could have gone out and played the hits forever. Instead, they made another record. A pretty bloody good one at that.
Apples for Isaac isn’t about looking backwards. It’s just Echo & the Bunnymen doing what Echo & the Bunnymen have always done best — making music that is atmospheric, melodic, slightly dark and completely their own.
And after all these years, that’s more than enough.
Review by James Edmond
