"Beautiful Happening" is Fairground Attraction's new album

(Release Date: Sep 27, 2024)

This time last year, the odds for a Fairground Attraction reunion may well have been longer than The Smiths, The Jam and Oasis combined. After all, the self-proclaimed neo-skifflers threw away their chart-topping, BRIT-winning success while recording the follow-up to 1988s debut LP The First Of A Million Kisses, as Eddi Reader and Mark E Nevin spent the following 35 years avoiding each other.

However, inspired by an impromptu onstage rendition of Allelujah by the warring parties, the quartet offered Japanese fans a last-minute Christmas present last December by announcing a tour. Now they're gifting the world with a belated second album.

Anyone looking for insight into the band's tempestuous split will be left wanting. They recently joked that a Scrabble game was at the root of the drama - and that's still pretty much the closest we have to an official line, its dozen self-produced tracks far more interested in celebrating their unlikely reformation than apportioning any blame.

As such, Sing Anyway, the life-affirming, country-tinged number which, as with the poignant A Hundred Years Of Heartache, has been repurposed from Nevin's solo catalogue, and seize-the-day anthem Learning To Swim, channel the breeziness of the band's signature hit, Perfect.

The love songs are equally optimistic, in particular The Simple Truth, a gorgeous serenade co-written with Mystery Jets singer Blaine Harrison that, if recorded by anyone within the Spotify elite, would become an instant wedding song favourite.

Beautiful Happening's inherently sunny disposition occasionally subsides, with both What's Wrong With The World? and Miracles posing existential questions about society's decline. But even then, the gentle acoustic strums, deft brush strokes and Reader's soulful vocal tones - she is still very much one of Britain's most underrated vocalists - ensure a sense of warmth always remains.

"There's something growing out of the sadness/ Something wonderful is happening," Reader sings on the opening title track. It's a fair summary of a timeless-sounding record worth the lengthy wait.