I just surprised myself. I listened to Echo & The Bunnymen's thirteenth album Apples For Isaac late on Sunday night and astonished myself. Forty five years after I'd first fallen for them as an uncouth teenager, miraculously they've found themselve agains. It's rare when this happens. But life is like that.
The Bunnymen mean so much to me. As they do to so many. They marked a map for me out of the teenage playground towards university and the world beyond it. Throughout those teenage years when anyone pointed a camera at me I instinctively turned my face to profile as the Bunnymen had on the sleeves of Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here and Porcupine because I wanted to project a romantic mystique. An idea of depth and mission.
They were the bravest of bands and they encouraged me to dream. I still play the records they made from '79 to '84 and they still make me feel the way they did then. And remarkably in 2026 Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant, (for that is who the Bunnymen are now). with Apples For Isaac they've done it again. They've rediscovered the essentially Gothic and Romantic quality that first set them apart. The Baroque, twisted Catholocism which was so deeply inspirational to the likeminded. The Jacobian flair . They've somehow rediscovered their ambition and edge . To carve anthems of thoughtful and slightly anguished worth for the masses.
McCulloch is unfeasibly sharp here, lyrically and vocally. He's tapped back into the 'people rolling round on the carpet' dazed 'found poetry' of the early days and Sergeant rises to the task in a quite inspired manner. As for me. I'm incredibly pleased to see The Bunnymen back on the podium. This is inspired stuff and as with the best of their back catalogue A Promise, The Cutter, it's light on the waves once more. Nothing will cahnge. Everything will change !
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