There’s a reckoning in The Smile You Send Out Returns To You, Constant Follower’s third album. It’s not an epiphany that strikes like lightning but rather a gradual awareness that you’ve been stuck without realising it. Stephen McAll, the two-time SAY Award-nominated mind behind the project, writes like someone reconstructing a life from scattered fragments. It’s intimate without being intrusive—more like stumbling on a hushed conversation, unsure why you stayed but glad you did.
McAll’s backstory almost eclipses the music: a brutal assault aged 17 on his way home from a party fractured his memory and stole two decades of music-making from him. Yet, like his previous work, The Smile You Send Out Returns To You doesn’t dwell in the shadows. Instead, he takes the difficult path, making peace with what’s gone and finding significance in what remains.
The album took shape during the pandemic in a remote cabin near Callander, Scotland, where McAll wrote in solitude, funded by Creative Scotland. Once foundations were laid, he took them to Austin, Texas, to work with Dan Duszynski, known for his work with Loma and Brian Eno. Woven into the fabric of these songs are the harmonies of Kathleen Stosch and Amy Campbell, whose vocals don’t just embellish but illuminate, like shafts of light through half-closed blinds. Their presence gives everything an almost choral intimacy, reinforcing McAll’s reflections with unwavering strength. The result is an album made for foggy, early mornings and empty roads—those rare moments when life slows down enough to hear yourself think.
The title track creaks open – a door into a long-forgotten room. McAll’s weathered yet steady voice glides over delicate fingerpicked guitar as the song unfolds gently, almost tentatively, discovering its own meaning in real-time. McAll asks us to believe, however cautiously, that healing is possible and that the effort we put into the world, even when it feels futile, matters more than we might ever realise. It leads effortlessly into ‘Whole Be’, a meditation on identity and imperfection. The song leans into a contradiction that often haunts us through life, only to become clear when it’s almost too late: the pursuit of perfection is endless and unattainable. McAll has spoken about how it also explores the seductive pull of substances—the betraying sense of peace they offer and the hollow ache they leave behind.
‘Almost Time To Go’ passes swiftly, barely two minutes, like a thought slipping away before you can grasp it. ‘All Is Well’ follows, one of the album’s anchors. Here, McAll examines the dull rhythms of modern existence—wake, work, numb, repeat. The refrain “All is well” could be reassurance or bitter irony – a comforting lie we tell ourselves to sidestep harsher realities. Inspired by the myth of Sisyphus, the song suggests many of us are trapped in cycles of struggle and distraction, overlooking the meaning embedded in the effort itself.
At the album’s core sits ‘Happy Birthdays’, a seven-and-a-half-minute centrepiece of exposed nerve. A suspended moment that recalls sorrow and fragile joy as acoustic guitar drifts languidly, and McAll’s voice ruminates in short, hushed snatches of meaning. The song flickers like dying embers—never reigniting fully, stretching a moment across time, unresolved and delicate.
‘Gentle Teaching‘ draws from the Scottish myth of Selkies as a metaphor for relationships—transient, untamed, and never truly ours to possess. ‘Patient Has Own Supply‘ follows, its title nodding to self-reliance in the context of addiction and recovery. The sound here evokes the 90’s slowcore aesthetic of Low, with brushed drums and restrained guitar lines imparting an inner strength, barely perceptible.
The album closes with ‘It’s Only Silence’, a track that rises slowly, initially submerged in its sorrow, before bright flashes of guitars illuminate its inevitable exit, before fading into nothingness. There’s no grand finale, just the last light slipping below the horizon.
Compared to Neither Is, Nor Ever Was, Constant Follower’s 2021 debut on Shimmy Disc, this album feels more assured—less like a tentative step and more like a deliberate stride. The debut had flashes of brilliance but often felt fragile, understandable given McAll’s long hiatus from music. His follow-up collaboration with Scott William Urquhart, Even Days Dissolve, leaned into folk minimalism, stripping everything down to raw emotion. The Smile You Send Out Returns To You finds a middle ground: richer in sound yet still intimate, like a whispered confidence.
A reflection on the daily grind and the small triumphs found in persistence, McAll sees something new in these moments that offer a way out. “Wake up, go to work, come home, numb yourself with whatever is available—alcohol, drugs, social media, mindless TV—then do it all over again. Often, it feels like the work we do, the routines we follow, wouldn’t matter if we didn’t show up.” McAll might hesitate to call himself a musician, but there’s no denying he’s a songwriter of rare depth. This is music for the in-between moments—the pauses, the uncertainties, the catching of breath. In a world that often feels too loud and too fast, that feels like a gift.
‘The Smile You Send Out Returns To You’ is released on 28th February, via Last Night From Glasgow.
