Trashcan Sinatras - In The Music

Despite pre-dating contemporaries such as Teenage Fanclub and having more than their fair share of seminal moments tucked away in their unjustly niche back-catalogue, Trashcan Sinatras have never managed to inspire quite the same levels of devotion as the Fannies. In The Music is too pedestrian to prompt any major re-evaluation of the band’s ranking in the literary Scot-pop pantheon, but it’ll at least add further gems to their repertoire. Prisons is a cheery jaunt that skips and jumps with delicately deft indie-pop nous, but it’s Should I Pray? (featuring Carly Simon on co-vocals) that impresses most by stylishly breaking free from the overly obvious indie-pop paradigm. For the album’s highlight, the Irvine-ites wrap themselves in a plastic soul sheen and adopt a smooth strut closer to Philly soulsters The Delfonics than anything born of a Glasgow postcode, and in the process redeem the album’s more tepid moments.