After a decade away, Trashcan Sinatras are back. Ever The Optimist, the Scottish band’s seventh studio album, is out now on TCS Recordings, and its title track — the record’s bright, confident opening statement — arrives today with a companion video.

The song captures a band sounding genuinely revitalized. It opens on a soul-inflected piano motif before building into a fuller arrangement of layered basslines, raw rhythm guitar, and bursts of electric guitar, with frontman Francis Reader delivering one of his most assured vocal performances in years, wrapped in the kind of rich harmonies the band has long been known for. Reader has said the song started as a simple acoustic sketch before transforming into the driving, piano-led track it became, and he’s described it as something of a mission statement for the album as a whole.

That transformation speaks to how the band works these days — writing and recording across long distances and years of separate lives, leaning into whatever tools and time allow rather than forcing things into a traditional studio process.

“Ever The Optimist” is the last of several advance singles the band has released ahead of the album, following the atmospheric “The Bitter End,” the introspective “Melodramatic,” “Bad Husband” (featuring Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell), and “Games For The ZX Spectrum.” Together, they’ve offered a preview of an 11-track record that spans a wide range of moods while staying rooted in the band’s trademark melodic sensibility. The album also includes a previously unheard duet, “Hold On To Today,” featuring Green Gartside of Scritti Politti.

Produced by Paul Savage — the Delgados drummer whose production résumé includes Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub, and Arab Strap — Ever The Optimist reunites the band’s unchanged lineup of Reader, Paul Livingston, John Douglas, Stephen Douglas, and Davy Hughes. The album’s release follows a one-off 40th anniversary show at Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre, the first time all five members had shared a stage in nearly seven years.

Trashcan Sinatras

Ever The Optimist

TCS Recordings

Tracklist:

1. Ever The Optimist
2. Games For The ZX Spectrum
3. Bad Husband (ft. Tracyanne Campbell)
4. The Bitter End
5. A View From Nowhere
6. Hold On To Today (ft. Green Gartside)
7. The Associated Funk
8. Rome
9. Melodramatic
10. Birds I Couldn’t Identify
11. Learning To Love Your Ghost

Pre-order Ever The Optimist here.