Almost five decades on from their debut album, Echo And The Bunnymen return with a quirky, optimistic album that embraces their long career without dwelling on it. Apples For Isaac find Ian McCulloch and Will Seargent still enjoying the process.

MOVING ON

I’m always wary of a new release from a band who are almost fifty years on from their debut. There is always the temptation to look backwards and measure every new song against the ones that established the band in the first place. With Echo And The Bunnymen, that temptation is particularly strong. Heaven Up Here and Ocean Rain are rightly regarded as classics, but Apples For Isaac suggests the band can still make something that feels like them without simply trying to recreate their past output. We’ve seen varying successes of these 90s bands stepping back into the fore again, but Apples for Isaac has a rightful place in the outstanding discography of Echo And The Bunnymen.

Optimistic Hope and Pomp

From the opening moments of Take Me By The Hand, there is no sense of the band trying to reclaim their past – or even live off past glories if being totally honest. Instead, there is an unexpected optimism and brightness to the album. The opening track arrives with a real sense of pomp, with glimpses of glam influences running through a song that feels more playful than much of what we have come to expect from Echo and The Bunnymen.

Can’t Be Sold continues that energy, its melody bouncing between tight drumming and Will Sergeant’s guitar, while choral interludes add another layer to an arrangement where the whole band likely shared a smile whilst playing so harmoniously. The Honey, appearing later in the album, is a slower burner, but retains that same sense of optimism. The upbeat opening is maintained the the three minute track, even if the lyrics are at times on the dimmer shade of bright.

McCulloch’s Quirks

That energy continues through some of the album’s many quirky moments. Brussels Is Haunted is a musical travelogue through the Belgian city, carrying the band’s familiar sense of mystery whilst maintaining that tightness the band established from the outset. Hijacked continues that surreal approach, and is the track from which the album title is derived. It is strangely reassuring to hear McCulloch tunefully sing the word ’Parasites”.

Lab Rats Ran is perhaps the clearest example of the album’s willingness so play and, frankly, have a bit of a laugh. The saxophone-driven track is a long way from the darkness that has traditionally defined Echo and The Bunnymen, yet it never feels out of place. There is still that unmistakable combination of cryptic lyrics, melodic invention and Sergeant’s guitar.

Rasping Vocals and Seargent’s Guitar

It is McCulloch’s voice, though, that remains the defining feature. Any new Echo And The Bunnymen release ultimately has to answer the question of whether Ian McCulloch can still deliver that rasping vocal that has given the band so much of their character. There are moments when the rounded higher notes that lifted songs such as The Killing Moon, Lips Like Sugar and Nothing Lasts Forever are less evident than they once were, but there is something equally compelling about the voice that remains. It has become more weathered and, at times, more vulnerable.

I’ll Be Your Sunshine is one of the album’s most tender moments and inevitably brings Nothing Lasts Forever to mind. It has that same ability to take romanticism and make it feel emotionally substantial rather than sentimental. There are echoes here of the vocal style McCulloch helped establish and which can still be heard in artists who followed him.

A Little More Vulnerability

An Unstoppable Force is where McCulloch sounds at his most striking. His voice sits prominently within a somewhat distinctive and haunting arrangement, while the rasp that once provided attitude now carries a little more vulnerability. We Prayed In The Dark offers another glimpse of this more exposed side of the singer, with the darkness that has always existed within the band’s music.

The album does lose some momentum in its latter stages. Asimov feels comparatively dreary, lacking some of the soul and reach found elsewhere, while The Light That Surrounds You doesn’t quite possess the immediacy of the earlier tracks. The opening run is difficult to match, but that doesn’t diminish what has come before.

The Ability To Find The Beauty

Apples For Isaac isn’t going to displace Heaven Up Here or Ocean Rain, and it shouldn’t be judged on whether it does. Those records belong to a different moment in the band’s history and occupy a place that few artists ever manage to reach. What makes this album interesting is that Echo And The Bunnymen haven’t attempted to recreate that moment. Instead, they have taken the things that have always made them distinctive — McCulloch’s cryptic lyrics and unmistakable voice, Sergeant’s guitar, the romanticism, the darkness and the ability to find beauty in unexpected places — and allowed them to exist in the present.

Great artists earn longevity not simply by preserving what they once were, but by understanding what makes them themselves and finding ways to keep that alive. Almost fifty years after their debut, Echo & the Bunnymen have managed to make something that is uniquely theirs without sounding trapped by their history. It sounds like Echo & the Bunnymen, but importantly, it sounds like Echo & the Bunnymen now.

Apples For Isaac is out now through BMG and the band have a small UK tour scheduled for November.

Here’s Can’t Be Sold:

Echo And The Bunnymen: Website

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