Echo & The Bunnymen: a new album is coming after 12 years. Listen to “Brussels Is Haunted”, first single from “Apples For Isaac”

46 years after forming, Echo & The Bunnymen still show no signs of stopping. The legendary Liverpool band has announced “Apples For Isaac”, their new album of unreleased material out September 18th via BMG. It's their first work made up of original material since 2014's “Meteorites”. 2018 brought “The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon”, a collection of new recordings of older songs, but this new record marks the band's genuine creative comeback after more than a decade.

Work on “Apples For Isaac” began shortly after the release of “The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon”, but several obstacles slowed its completion. Ian McCulloch told Mojo: “I think Covid had something to do with the delay. But I also wanted everything to make sense lyrically, or to be cryptically important. Which is a ridiculous phrase.” An expression, “cryptically important”, that nonetheless seems to perfectly sum up the dark, solemn and enigmatic aesthetic of Echo & The Bunnymen.
The first sessions took place at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool, which closed in 2020. Work then continued at Doghouse Studios in Henley, where the band also stayed during the recordings.
Clem Burke, the legendary Blondie drummer who passed away in 2025, plays on almost every track. The album is dedicated to his memory.

The first single taken from the album is “Brussels Is Haunted”, a track Echo & The Bunnymen have already been playing live for a few years, and one in which the melancholic grandeur of their most classic work resurfaces.
McCulloch described the song's origins as follows: “It started years ago. Brussels was a magical place, the first city abroad the band ever played, back in 1980. We were invited by the city's trendiest scene. A friend of ours, Bert Bertrand, appears in the opening verse. He used to follow us around everywhere along with Annik Honoré. He ended up taking his own life in New York. It still haunts me, and of course there's also Annik Honoré and the story of Ian Curtis. There's a sense of absolute beauty, a kind of ancient sadness and maybe some looming fate. And then there's Brussels as the centre of European politics. All these things are wrapped up in a single song, and it's strange the way they ended up connecting to each other.” Listen to “Brussels Is Haunted” below.

Here's the tracklist for “Apples For Isaac”:

1. Take Me By The Hand
2. Can’t Be Sold
3. Brussels Is Haunted
4. I’ll Be Your Sunshine
5. Hijacked
6. The Honey
7. An Unstoppable Force
8. The Light That Surrounds You
9. Lab Rats Ran
10. Asimov
11. We Prayed In The Dark

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google