Echo & The Bunnymen have released The Light That Surrounds You, the latest preview of their first album of new music in 12 years, Apples For Isaac.
by Paul Cashmere
Echo & The Bunnymen have released The Light That Surrounds You on 18 August, giving listeners the second advance track from Apples For Isaac, the Liverpool band’s first album of new material since 2014. The song follows Brussels Is Haunted and comes one month before the 18 September release of the band’s 13th album.
The release marks another step in the return of Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant to recorded new music after more than a decade in which Echo & The Bunnymen have remained active as a touring band. The Light That Surrounds You is the eighth track on Apples For Isaac, an 11-song collection produced by McCulloch and mixed by McCulloch, Alan Moulder and Andrea Wright.
Apples For Isaac follows Meteorites, released in 2014, and The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon, the 2018 compilation of reworked and newly recorded material. The new album therefore represents the first collection of newly written Echo & The Bunnymen material in 12 years. Noise11 reported the album announcement in July, when Brussels Is Haunted was released as the first single.
The new song also arrives with added significance because of the musicians involved in the album. Clem Burke, the longtime Blondie drummer and friend of McCulloch, played on 10 of the record’s 11 tracks. Burke died during the completion of Apples For Isaac, and the band has acknowledged his contribution to the project.
“The mighty, legendary Clem Burke, longtime friend of Mac, was integral to the making of the album, and heartbreakingly passed away during its completion. We love you, Clem x,” the band said when the album was announced.
Burke’s presence places The Light That Surrounds You within a recording project that spans two distinct moments for Echo & The Bunnymen. The album documents the band’s return to the studio while also containing performances from a drummer whose career included some of the most recognisable recordings of the new wave era.
McCulloch previously explained that the long gap between studio albums was partly connected to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also to his approach to the lyrics.
“What kept us? I think Covid had something to do with it,” he said. “But also I just wanted, lyrically, for everything to make sense, or to be cryptically important.”
He has also described the completed record as unusually close to the sound he had imagined while writing and recording it, saying, “More than any other record I can remember, it’s actually sounding how I heard it in my head. I’ve just gone, sing it how you want to hear it.”
The new material follows a substantial period of live activity for Echo & The Bunnymen. Since Meteorites, the band has continued to perform internationally, drawing extensively on a catalogue that was established during the post-punk era and has remained central to alternative rock history.
Formed in Liverpool in 1978, Echo & The Bunnymen developed their defining sound through albums including Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here, Porcupine and Ocean Rain. Songs such as The Cutter, The Killing Moon, Seven Seas and Bring On The Dancing Horses have continued to anchor their live repertoire.
Meteorites was the band’s 12th studio album and marked their first new studio collection since 2009. Noise11 reported at the time that the record was produced by Youth and featured McCulloch and Sergeant alongside their then touring musicians. The album later returned Echo & The Bunnymen to the charts, with Noise11 noting its appearance on the Billboard 200 was the band’s first there in 27 years.
The gap between Meteorites and Apples For Isaac is therefore significant in the band’s recording history. While the group has continued to perform its established catalogue, the new album gives McCulloch and Sergeant an opportunity to add another chapter to a body of work that began almost five decades ago.
The Light That Surrounds You follows Brussels Is Haunted in establishing the musical direction of Apples For Isaac ahead of its September release. The album will be issued on black vinyl, limited splatter vinyl, a limited picture disc, CD and digital formats.
With Apples For Isaac now less than a month away, The Light That Surrounds You provides the latest indication of what the completed 11-track album will offer. Its release also keeps Clem Burke’s contribution at the centre of the record’s story, connecting Echo & The Bunnymen’s new chapter with the legacy of a drummer whose work became an integral part of the album.
Apples For Isaac
Take Me By The Hand
Can’t Be Sold
Brussels Is Haunted
I’ll Be Your Sunshine
Hijacked
The Honey
Unstoppable Force
The Light That Surrounds You
Lab Rats Ran
Asimov
We Prayed In The Dark
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