Trashcan Sinatras emit stomping soul positivity as 'Ever The Optimist' arrives!

Trashcan Sinatras are glass half full, releasing their first album in ten years with uplifting, stomping soul title track...

With the release of their first studio album in ten years, Trashcan Sinatras treat listeners to a video for its opening salvo, Ever The Optimist, the title track and the record’s unambiguously upbeat scene setter. Serving as the brightly painted front door to the band's seventh studio album in an illustrious four-decade story of friendship and music, the warm sophistication evokes the existence-querying, yet life-affirming outlook that runs across 11 new tracks of freshly inspired music.

Reuniting for a very special, one-off 40th anniversary live performance at Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre last month, the single’s video provides the first glimpse of all five members on stage together for the first time in almost seven years. An emotional reunion, it left a new sentence unfinished in the band’s storybook but served as an expression of gratitude and joy amongst an invited audience of old friends.

Opening with a recurring soul piano motif before expanding into a richly layered arrangement of intricate basslines, raw rhythm guitars and punctuating electric squalls, Ever The Optimist proves the Ayrshire five-piece to be both revitalised and unmistakably themselves. Evergreen front man, Francis Reader delivers one of his most assured recent vocal performances, buoyed by opulent multi-part harmonies that transform the song into a stirring, keys-driven anthem that retains the intimacy and emotional intelligence that have long defined the band's songwriting.

Frequently working across the time differences that long, adventurous lives have brought between them, Trashcan Sinatras’ approach to writing and studio recording is necessarily unorthodox. Embracing the opportunity for innovation, experimentation and the gifts that technology and time brings, the track evolved dramatically from its inception to completion.

"'Ever The Optimist' began life as a breezy acoustic tune before becoming this stomping, piano-driven thumper," explains co-songwriter and vocalist Francis Reader. "It's a real clarion call to listeners of the long player. Listen out for the pop art poem-aping 'mmmmaybee' and 'fii-iire!' in the first verse, and the great nagging guitar part around the 1.46 mark. Like its title itself, this song hints at a great set of songs to follow."

The final single from Ever The Optimist, released today on TCS Recordings, completes an impressive sequence of advance singles that has steadily revealed the breadth of the album’s moods and textures. From the atmospheric undulations of The Bitter End and the introspective Melodramatic to the darkly buoyant Bad Husband, featuring Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell, and the quietly reflective Games For The ZX Spectrum, each has illuminated a different corner of an album that offers deft musical progression and some of the finest songwriting of the band's career.

Produced by Paul Savage. drummer with The Delgados and acclaimed producer for artists including Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub and Arab Strap, Ever The Optimist is a reassuringly typical Trashcans Sinatras album, rich in melodic invention with the band’s characteristically perceptive lyricism. Alongside their ever-present front man, the band’s unchanged line-up of Reader with Paul Livingston (guitar), John Douglas (guitar), Stephen Douglas (drums) and Davy Hughes (bass) proves what remarkable chemistry remains within the band.

Ever The Optimist has arrived on standard and collectors' edition vinyl, CD and digital formats and features one more, previously unheard collaboration with Green Gartside of Scritti Politti joining Reader for an intimate duet on Hold On To Today.

Avoiding lining up as a tired heritage act, the band has remained consistently creative throughout the past two decades, releasing the acclaimed albums Weightlifting, In The Music and Wild Pendulum, alongside carefully curated reissues and regular international touring. Their last release before announcing their latest album was 2022's warmly received Lay Of The Land EP, making Ever The Optimist not simply a welcome return, but a compelling reminder that one of Britain's most consistently, critically acclaimed songwriting forces continues to find fresh inspiration, curiosity and optimism.

Since emerging from Scotland's west coast in the late 1980s, Trashcan Sinatras have occupied a singular place within British guitar music. Their celebrated debut album Cake introduced classics including Obscurity Knocks, while subsequent releases such as I've Seen Everything, featuring cult classic Hayfever, and the once overlooked A Happy Pocket cemented a catalogue renowned for its poetic wit and melodic elegance. When A Happy Pocket was reissued in 2023, its long-overdue critical reappraisal saw the album return to the UK Official Albums Chart, introducing its restrained brilliance to a new generation of listeners.