ever the optimist – Plain Or Pan

There’s been a good wee buzz in the more discreet corners of the world wide web surrounding the imminent release of the Trashcan Sinatras‘ (magnificent) seventh album, Ever The Optimist.

Around the turn of the year, Billy Sloan’s BBC Radio Scotland show had the first play of The Bitter End, the irony of the track’s title only slightly lost on the evergreen presenter who was at the helm for his second-to-last late-night radio show. A sparkling and thumping three chord guitar anthem, The Bitter End was, in the absence of an actual physical single release, the ideal track with which to announce the return of a group which had been low-key to the point of invisibility over the past decade. Save a couple of largely ignored (yet indispensable) 7″ and 12″ releases and a back catalogue reissue campaign through the Last Night From Glasgow label, the group had been apparently inactive. Their previous album, Wild Pendulum, was now ten years old and there was an uneasy air that maybe, as far as cult groups go, that was that.

Little did anyone outwith the group’s close-knit inner circle know, but ideas and rhyming couplets and chord progressions and guitary hooklines and actual songs were percolating, whizzing around the planet between the principal Trashcans in the form of digital demos, the bedrock upon which Ever The Optimist was taking shape.

If The Bitter End was the perfect ‘we’re back! back! back!’ lead ‘single’, then its follow-up would further whet the appetite of a collective fanbase desperate for more few material. Bad Husband was ushered confidently into the world a month or so ago, a duet with Camera Obscura’s Traceyanne Campbell with a cyclical chord progression and weaving melody to die for; the Trashcans of old, but viewed through an Islands In The Stream filter. I must’ve heard – and really listened to – this song a couple of hundred times by now and it’s yet to sound anything less than fresh and urgent.

I’ve been very lucky, y’see, to have had the entire record on repeat for six months or so. I’ve grown to love its perfect mix of bombast and brittleness, the way it flits from loud to quiet, from foot-down-and-drive anthemic to heartstring-tugging introspection and insularity. Without spoiling anything further, I’d say with a fair amount of confidence that Trashcan Sinatras fans will really take to it and love it. I might even suggest, debatable as that will prove to be, that it’s the band’s greatest album.

I was actually a wee bit surprised at the choice of third ‘single’.

Melodramatic and its accompanying video was released mid-week there, again to high praise and an outpouring of superlatives. Within the context of the album, Melodramatic might be my least favourite track (yes, really!) – which might say something to anyone here who’s reading this and now can’t wait for the album – but taken as a stand alone track…and with the benefit of a video behind it, (especially the video) I’ve been appreciating it all the more.

Much of the studio footage in the video was captured four years ago in Glasgow’s Gloworm Studios by Stephanie Gibson. Stephanie, as some readers here will know, was responsible for the portraits and abstract images that helped elevate The Perfect Reminder (my book on the making of the second TCS album) from mere reportage to definitive biography. Stephanie’s video footage was sympathetically edited and knitted together by Chris Dooley. Chris, as some readers here will also know, was responsible for the design, look and feel of The Perfect Reminder, elevating it from definitive biography to luxury item. And why am I telling you this?

I’m telling you this because four years ago, just after our book was given the Saturday night headline slot at the Aye Write book festival in Glasgow, Stephanie and myself were invited to Gloworm for an afternoon. So while Stephanie was filming the band at work, I was sat on a couch in the studio taking it all in; John as he played a chord sequence – warming up, I thought – until Davy leaned over and slid the faders on the desk to bathe the room in a sound of liquid gold – a brand new Trashcans’ track in the process of being born! I could see Stephen in the drum room, working his kit with a tender touch. I could hear Paul’s guitar(s), flown in digitally from the west coast of America and playing fantastically and loudly through the studio’s speaker system. And although I couldn’t yet see Frank, I could hear him and his unmistakable pitch-perfect voice. He was singing slowly – crooning even – about ‘the likes of Cincinnati‘. Wow, I thought. They’re channelling Scott Walker, but twisting his words through trademark TCS wordplay and turning out a slow-burning beauty…and right before my eyes and ears. If this is the demo, I’m thinking, I can’t wait to hear the finished version.

“Yeah,” said Frank to me a month or so ago. “We binned that one.”

It’s not on the upcoming record at all. Which, again, should give TCS fans a glimpse into the high watermark of quality they demand before they’ll attach their name to a song.

If you watch the video carefully – and don’t blink at the wrong moment – around the 37 seconds mark, you’ll catch a glimpse of my surprised face as Stephanie’s camera swoops down on the sofa I was sitting in while that glorious Trashcans sound filled the room. Look ma! It’s me! In a pop video! What a thrill!