7/10

'Held the Pulse' is an EP shaped as much by place as by sound. Across five tracks, Glasgow-based songwriter Stewart Traquair draws from psychedelic pop, soul, folk-rock and flashes of glam without allowing any one influence to dominate.

There's this weathered romanticism running through the EP. These are songs that seem most at home after dark, when the city has thinned out and memory starts doing more of the talking. Traquair writes about connection, uncertainty and survival with a slightly bruised perspective, but there's enough warmth in the melodies to stop the record from sinking too far into melancholy.

The opening single ‘Girl, Your Mind Is a Dangerous Game’ captures that balance particularly well. Its tension is immediate, but the song never loses its melodic pull, creating a sense of unease without becoming heavy-handed. Then the title-track shifts the mood again, introducing gospel-inflected touches that bring a little more lift and colour into the arrangement.

Then there's the empathic ‘A Great Time to Be Alive’, a song that plays interestingly with its own title. Optimism is present, but Traquair seems more interested in the effort it takes to hold onto hope when experience has already given you reasons to be cautious.

Roscoe Wilson’s production keeps its focus narrow. The songs are allowed to retain some roughness around the edges, while the 12-string guitar adds a distinctive shimmer that helps tie the different moods together. There are traces of classic psychedelia and Scottish indie throughout, but the EP never feels overly nostalgic.

And that is perhaps 'Held the Pulse’s strongest quality. Compact, atmospheric and full of character, it finds Traquair turning late-night reflection into something beautifully compelling. It's a release that doesn't rush to reveal everything at once, and is all the better for it.