Slow and steady wins the race. Scotland’s Trashcan Sinatras have been making sparkling, literate guitar pop with the same five-piece lineup for four decades. While there’s often a gap between releases, they’ve maintained an equally remarkable level of quality, which continues with “Ever the Optimist”, their seventh album and first in 10 years. “We’re all gambling, trying to hold it together,”
Frank Reader sings on “Ever the Optimist‘s” sprightly title track and opening song. “Always, forever, through stormy weather.” The guitars chime, Reader’s voice sounds just like it did on the band’s debut album, “Cake”, and when the rest of the band join in on harmonies, the song really takes off. They just keep flying from there. Not unlike fellow Glaswegians Teenage Fanclub and Aztec Camera, Trashcan Sinatras have an effortless way with melody, a knack for earworm choruses, and an even better way with middle eights, not to mention a disposition for marrying warm tunes with melancholic lyrics that is just so satisfying.
The album, which features guest appearances form Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell and Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside, ends on a sublime note, and really earns its title, with “Learning to Love Your Ghost,” a song about grief and acceptance that’s as good as any they’ve ever written. “When there’s no more normal to barricade my mind / When you’re deep in the trenches, what you gonna do but survive?” Reader sings against swelling strings and horns. Survive they do, the Trashcan Sinatras. Gracefully.
