In recent years, wordy indie-folk popster Adam Ross has become a lynchpin of the ever-fertile Scottish scene. Part of a songwriting lineage that stretches in many directions – back to Edwyn Collins, the Proclaimers, even Ivor Cutler, and laterally to Stuart Murdoch and the Mull Historical Society – Ross cut his teeth as frontman of eight-piece chamber-pop collective Randolph’s Leap, releasing seven albums between 2012 and 2021. Since 2022, he has been releasing records under his own name, and Bring On the Apathy is the third.
As a songwriter, Ross is deceptively gentle. His melodies scurry or bound or lope along, sometimes jaunty, sometimes suffused with a light melancholy, but his lyrics are always witty and frequently biting. Bring On the Apathy’s title is a reflection of the times: Ross casts a discerning eye over society and observes that it is currently beset by fatigue and malaise. His response is a set of songs that engages on multiple levels with the vicissitudes of the world at large, and of the music business in particular. The title track – its chorus lilting along with classic pop aplomb – is critical of unearned privilege and the way it devalues creative endeavour, but Ross sings it like a call to arms, or at least a note to self, a reminder that art deserves to exist and can transcend apathy. The combination of barbed lyrics and honky-tonk piano might even make you think of Randy Newman.
The flipside of this is the windswept, melancholic pop of opener Berkeley Street, in which Ross takes a look back to his formative years. It resists the easy trappings of nostalgia but still manages to pack a bittersweet punch, thanks largely to some wry lyrical observations and a sweeping string arrangement. I Never Thought You Couldn’t Not has the effortless feel of latter-day Belle and Sebastian: a song that seems like it just fell out of its composer fully formed (though Ross’s vocals are less mannered than Murdoch’s, perhaps more confident in its Scottishness). Unrequited exists at a strange crossroads between soft rock dynamics, blue-eyed soul vocals and folk rock instrumentation. You could almost imagine Rod Stewart belting out the wordless vocalisations of the chorus, but you can’t imagine him doing a better job than Ross.
This may be a solo album by name, but Ross’s band plays a crucial role, from the backing vocals that add drama and soul to practically every song to Randolph’s Leap bandmate Pete MacDonald’s piano, which takes some of these songs into mid-60s Dylan territory. You could almost imagine Sandy Denny singing the folk-rock ballad Horizon, which is beautifully decorated by Pedro Cameron’s violin. To the Kites has an almost jazzy swing to it, with Cameron Maxwell’s bass playing a particularly prominent role.
There are telling contrasts throughout the record. How Do You Know? is a tender, slow-paced love song with a delicate piano solo and a chorus that takes flight on angelic backing vocals. At the other end of the scale is the brief, peppy Lost in the Daylight, which nods in the direction of power pop. But certain themes make themselves known and echo from one song to another. Ageing is one such theme: it pervades the reminiscences of Berkeley Street, but also the brutally honest self-examination of Crisis. The linked ideas of ageing and changing relationships come together in the stripped-back closer Time, with its sad but playful filigree of piano. Here Ross examines nothing less than the meaning of life itself, but still finds time for a pithy couplet or two (‘I went to a stylist to rebrand as a nihilist’ is a real winner). And in the end, that’s what makes his songwriting special: instead of presenting us with separate extremes of darkness and light (or humour and seriousness), he allows them to stand together, to mingle and create something subtle and beguiling, something that rewards close and continued listening. Ross is an understated master of songwriting, and Bring On the Apathy is his most mature and rewarding album yet.
Bring on the Apathy (May 15th, 2026) Fika Recordings
Bandcamp: https://fikarecordings.bandcamp.com/album/bring-on-the-apathy