On the back of an overwhelmingly positive Love Is The Call, Cast return with ten tracks that are reminiscent of their earlier work.

Cast are back only two years after their last release, and fresh from their supporting tour with Oasis, the Scouse quartet release their eighth studio album Yeah Yeah Yeah. It’s hard to believe that John Power is 58 years old. He performs like a man many decades his junior and can be an inspiration to all of us out there who survived the 90s with lingering memories somewhat intact, if not fading through the vignette.

Coming off the back of an overwhelmingly positive 2024 release, Love Is The Call, they return this January with ten tracks that are reminiscent of their earlier work. These songs however are written by a group with an accumulation of wisdom, patience and whole-worldly view; it’s surprisingly refreshing and further demonstrates Power’s endless ability to pen meaningful songs with a sound that is both classic and yet distinct enough to give the band a broader appeal than their original fanbase might allow.

A Deep Well

Yeah Yeah Yeah is very much a record about going back to the well without simply drawing up the same water. The album finds Cast leaning into a cleaner, fuller sound that stays true to their jangling Mersey roots while opening the windows to let in brass, strings and gospel-tinged backing vocals. Opener Poison Vine sets the tone immediately: a swaggering groove powered by an ascending bassline, P.P. Arnold’s soulful interjections and triumphant brass that screams stadium anthem from the off. Don’t Look Away follows with defined rhythm and melodic lift, simmering verses exploding into resolute choruses that feel like belief cast in the fire of experience.

The “Mersey sound” has always been Cast’s secret engine, and Yeah Yeah Yeah feels like a conscious decision to tune it up rather than trade it in. Calling Out Your Name and Free Love deliver widescreen anthems, their chiming guitars and Power’s impassioned rasp evoking the carefree uplift of All Change while brass swells add a fresh sound. There’s a looseness to the playing – a rolling, late-60s swagger in Devil And The Deep, which fuses Nashville twang with Liverpool grit for a standout slice of  Americana-inflected rock. If the 90s Cast occasionally felt like young men sprinting towards the horizon, this is a band comfortable enough in their own skin to amble, look around and describe the view.

Wisful Wisdom

Lyrically is where the album really delivers its “age-old new perspective on life.” Weight Of The World stands as one of the record’s emotional peaks: reverb-drenched guitars give way to a slow groove and a scintillating solo that moves with real feeling, as Power grapples with modern burden. The Way It’s Gotta Be (Oh Yeah) injects funky riffs and psychedelic edges, its fluid rhythm section underscoring lyrics of self-assured truth – a track primed for live extension with Liam Tyson’s captivating guitar work. These are songs written by someone who has lived long enough to see cycles repeat – of fashion, of politics, of personal failings – but chooses hope over sullenness.

What keeps the record feeling alive rather than reverential is its jauntiness, that instinctive Cast knack for stitching sharp, sing-back lines to chords that feel pre-wired into our collective memory. Teardrops is the masterpiece moment: Bacharach sway meets Lightning Seeds Britpop in a timeless  gem where soul influences summon hope with the line “the world awaits for love to break the spell,” delivered with cinematic presence. Say Something New and Birds Heading South bring wistful reflection, the latter closing with gentle coming-of-age warmth that ties the album’s themes neatly.

Anthems, Introspection And What Lies Between

Crucially, Yeah Yeah Yeah never feels like a nostalgia piece – it doesn’t trade solely on the band’s formative years, even as it offers plenty for those of us who remember All Change the first time around. Cast sound like a band re-energised by late-career momentum: the Oasis stadium shows, the renewed eyes and ears on them, the chance to stand once more in front of huge crowds and prove they still belong there.

The album flows with a clear sense of purpose, sequencing the anthems and the more reflective detours so that you’re carried from swagger to introspection and back without ever feeling jolted. By the time Birds Heading South closes things out with its coming-of-age warmth and gentle forward motion, you’re left with the sense of a circle completed – not of a band repeating themselves, but of one that has walked all the way around their own story and found a fresh way back to the start.

If Love Is The Call hinted at a creative resurgence, Yeah Yeah Yeah confirms it. This is the sound of Cast honouring their raw origins – the jangling Mersey guitars, the sing-it-from-the-rafters choruses, the romantic grit – while writing from a vantage point only experience can provide. It’s bluesy, rocky, and soulful, but, more importantly, it’s full of life: an album that reminds you that surviving the 90s wasn’t the end of the story, just the first act. For those of us still carrying those decade-old memories, a little frayed but very much alive, Yeah Yeah Yeah feels like a welcome nudge forward – an invitation to raise a glass, sing along, and say yes to whatever comes next, three times. 

Here’s Way It’s Gotta Be:

Cast: Website

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