Echo & The Bunnymen have confirmed the full details of Apples For Isaac, their first album of new material in 12 years, revealing an 11-track listing and further background on its long gestation in a new MOJO feature. The Liverpool band, who formed 46 years ago, previously teased the record for years before this announcement, and frontman Ian McCulloch has now explained that the COVID-19 pandemic and his own insistence on lyrical coherence were behind the delays. The album, out on 18 September via BMG, is dedicated to Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who died last year and played on nearly every track.

Work began at Liverpool's Parr Street Studios, which closed in 2020, before continuing at Henley's Doghouse Studio. The tracklist includes "Take Me By The Hand", "Brussels Is Haunted", "Hijacked" and "Asimov" among others. McCulloch gave new detail on lead single "Brussels Is Haunted", tracing it to the band's first overseas show in Brussels in 1980 and the death by suicide of a friend, Bert Bertrand, who used to follow the band with Annik Honoré, the partner of the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.