Apples for Isaac

<b>Echo & The Bunnymen</b>’s 13th proper album, <i>Apples for Isaac</i> arrives 12 years after its predecessor, by far the longest gap in the Liverpool alt-rock legends’ nearly half-century run. And while founding members Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant had reportedly completed the record back in 2021, the revisions process went on for so long that the drummer they enlisted for the sessions—Blondie’s Clem Burke—passed away before the album could see the light of day. But the magic of <i>Apples for Isaac</i> is that you can sense all the craft and consideration that went into its singular balance of sunglasses-indoors attitude and string-swept elegance, yet it still comes out sounding like the most buoyant and breezy album in the Bunnymen’s discography. Loaded with shimmering sing-alongs like sha-la-la-lovely <b>“Brussels Is Haunted”</b>, the ba-ba-ba beauty <b>“The Honey”</b> and the brassy ’n’ sassy <b>“Lab Rats Ran”</b>, <i>Apples for Isaac</i> reminds us that this band were Britpop progenitors as much as they were post-punk mystics. <b>Our Favourite Track:</b> <b>“An Unstoppable Force”</b>, a regal romantic ballad that serves as both a spotlight-seizing showcase for McCulloch’s fine-wine voice and a theme-song celebration of the Bunnymen’s irrepressible vitality.