It show how far we’ve come – and not forward by the way – that in 2026 calling your album Ever The Optimist can be regarded as an act of minor provocation. It’s a quality that’s in short supply, not just because from a distance in order to be successful in this scrum of greed and solipsism it’s not required, but also because well, stuff just keeps happening.
At least in the case of The Trashcan Sinatras you can see why it could apply. A long career has included plenty of snakes as well as ladders, turmoil such that their classic debut Cake (1990) remains the commercial high watermark. Their last release Wild Pendulum came a decade ago, but with the quintet now scattered geographically singer Frank Reader sees progress as pragmatism. It’s to everyone’s credit that despite the fact all of those concerned were never in the same room, Ever The Optimist at no point sounds disjointed, more the fruits of trust and common understanding.
They get by with a little help from their friends as well though, with Green Gartside throwing in a likeable cameo via Hold On To Today and Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell duetting on the rootsy Bad Husband, but their familiar virtues – acerbic lyrics, beautiful melodies, a wistful sense of melancholy – otherwise course through the likes of opener The Bitter End and Games For The ZX Spectrum.
Any changes of course, as presented by The Associated Funk and Rome’s slight feeling of ambiguity, are at most gentle explorations of what might be. Ever The Optimist sees Reader and co. deftly balancing old and new, peaking with Melodramatic, an archetypally gorgeous arrangement for a song about the containing the self when you really deserve to be losing your head like everyone else. Perhaps this acknowledgement that the screams you hear may be your own one day shows how far we’ve come. Or not. Either way what The Trashcan Sinatras do remains, in it’s own way, a highly contagious folly beamed to us from some far off distant better days.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 