Progressive Rock
1 November 2026
More than nine years separate “Honey on the Razor’s Edge”, which Alan Reed released on 14 March 2017, from “Grey Sky Thinking”, which went up on his Bandcamp page on 1 November. It’s the third solo studio album by the Stirling-based singer. Reed is the former voice of Pallas, and of Abel Ganz before that, and he made his solo debut with “First in a Field of One” in 2012.
The title, Reed writes in the album notes, is “obviously a play on the old ‘Blue Sky thinking’ business metaphor” for stepping back and taking a fresh approach, which he calls “an act of creative optimism”. But the world he sees around him, he adds, doesn’t encourage optimism: he describes a divided society, with people retreating further into their silos, and says the songs are a way of working through those concerns.
There are nine songs, from “Into the Void” to “Bright Side of the Blue”, adding up to almost forty-seven minutes, plus an alternate mix of the opener. Reed sings and plays guitar and bass, with occasional keys and programming; Mike Stobbie handles keyboards, Niall Mathewson guitars and Henry Rogers drums, while Kim Maclean and Laetitia Chaudemanche sing backing vocals.
Text by Guillem Cardós