Waiting in the Rain

Scone & the Butterbeans make the kind of soul music that assumes the last bus has already gone.

The group emerged with a love of vintage rhythm and blues, close harmonies and choruses large enough to shelter beneath. Rather than reproduce the past note for note, they drag it through wet Scottish streets, steamed-up windows and chip-shop light. The result is classic heartbreak wearing sensible shoes.

Waiting in the Rain is built around warm bass, clipped guitar, sighing organ, patient brass and voices that know pleading rarely works but are prepared to give it another chorus. The production has the intimacy of an old seven-inch single without sanding away the weather. You can practically hear damp gathering at the edges.

The title track is the album’s centrepiece: a slow-burning plea from somebody left outside long enough to reconsider the entire relationship, but not quite long enough to leave. It understands that heartbreak is rarely cinematic. Most of the time, it is checking your phone beneath the awning of a closed shop.

“Do What You Gotta Do” brings a little backbone to proceedings. Its groove says dignity; its lyric says the singer will absolutely answer if called after midnight. That contradiction runs throughout the record. Every moment of defiance is followed by a harmony sweet enough to undo it.

The Butterbeans play with restraint, leaving room around the voice and allowing small details—a guitar answer, a held organ chord, a backing vocal arriving half a beat late—to carry the emotional weight. Nothing here begs for attention. It simply waits in the rain until attention feels guilty and comes back.

MERINGUE! asked how long the singer had been waiting.

“Since the first verse.”

No coat. No umbrella. Tremendous commitment to the material.