It feels as if the songs on Constant Follower’s ‘The Smile You Send Out Returns To You’ have been nurtured, perhaps subconsciously, over the two decades it took to realise his musical ambitions, resulting in an incredibly moving and distinctive album.
Stirling-based Stephen McAll, better known by his Constant Follower nom de plume, is a rare kind of songwriter: an artist inspired by trauma, personal loss and grief whose songs deal honestly with those emotions but are never afraid to offer up a little hope. This was true of last year’s collaboration with Scott William Urquhart, Even Days Dissolve, and it’s even more apparent on The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, his second solo album, where the songs often drift through liminal states before focussing on a bright musical passage or a sharp lyrical phrase.
As was the case on the Urquhart collab, McAll’s songs take inspiration from the literature of landscapes, and in particular, the poetry of Norman MacCaig, with whom he shares a certain kind of heartbroken optimism and a tangible affinity for the topography of his native Scotland. In fact, McAll credits MacCaig’s poetry for helping his recovery after a violent attack two decades ago left him with serious head injuries and long-lasting issues with memory and cognition.
The short lines and plain-spoken vocabulary of MacCaig’s poetry mask hidden emotional and philosophical depths, and the same can be said for McAll’s songs. The opener and title track is a case in point, and a kind of mission statement. The lyrics turn homespun wisdom into something genuine, heartfelt and profound. Clear, unhurried guitars (electric and acoustic circling around each other). McCall’s vocals, deep and resonant, are foregrounded in the mix, and further thickened by backing vocals which soar and sigh. The resulting sound is luxurious but melancholy and immediately establishes the importance of Dan Duszinski’s production. It’s a sound that will go on to give the whole record an epic but comforting profile, not unlike the lovingly layered slowcore of Low.
McAll’s honesty is most evident on Whole Be, a song that deals with the journey from alcohol use to sobriety and takes wide-eyed delight in the new ways of seeing that can arise from that journey. Again, a wordless chorus lends the song a dizzying, graceful trajectory. Almost Time To Go is built around a circular acoustic guitar motif courtesy of Andrew ‘Kurd’ Pankhurst and Andy Aquarius’ meditative harp. It is a beautiful song with an intense sense of balance and centredness. All Is Well (video premiere below) tackles darker subject matter: themes of mental health and the isolating nature of technology and medication surface amongst a sea of electronic pulses and sharp guitars. McCall’s singing begins thick and heavy, almost tranquilised, but a distinct clarity begins to push through as the song nears its conclusion.
All Is Well’s themes are mirrored in Patient Has Own Supply, which, with its simple, strummed acoustic guitar, seems like the album’s most conventional song. But it delivers a deeply personal message, and with Kurd’s lap steel added to the heavyweight production, it sounds like No Other-era Gene Clark filtered through 90s slowcore. Happy Birthdays is even more immersive. A soaring, swelling exploration of a very personal experience of loss, it feels both close and intangible. Gentle Teaching applies the Scottish myth of the Selkies to a contemporary relationship. It has a calm and unflustered surface, but underneath, there is a dark tidal roll of synths and a keening electric guitar. It’s Only Silence, which closes the album, emerges from a bed of rippling guitars, its balmy nature undercut by shuffling background noise before it expands in a bright, exultant plume, ending the album on a note of hope.
It may have taken McAll two decades to realise his musical ambitions in the face of personal hardship, but that long gestation period has resulted in a handful of releases that are characterised by maturity, perfectionism and an unmatched emotional depth. It feels as if the songs on The Smile You Send Out Returns To You have been nurtured, perhaps subconsciously, over that whole twenty-year period, resulting in an incredibly moving and distinctive album.
The video for All Is Well was Filmed and Directed by Edinburgh-based videographer & photographer Kris Boyle. www.krisboyle.co.uk
The Smile You Send Out Returns To You (28th February 2025) Last Night From Glasgow.
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Upcoming Concerts
November 11, 2024 – King’s Theatre, Kirkcaldy
December 14, 2024 – King’s Place, London
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