Rick Redbeard - To The Light Return Rick Redbeard

Rick Redbeard is the alt-folk alter-ego of Scottish musician Rick Anthony, best known as frontman of cult Glasgow indie-rock ensemble The Phantom Band, and as one half of atmospheric gothic folk duo Afterlands. Rick’s forthcoming third solo album (his first for Lost Map), To The Light Return, will be released on December 4, 2026 on limited-edition vinyl, CD and via digital platforms.

Made together with recording/mix engineer and producer Graeme Young (Idlewild, James Yorkston, Lost Map presents Weird Wave), To The Light Return features an array of friends and family – including Rick’s Afterlands accomplices Davey McAulay (Strike the Colours, From Scotland With Love) and Jill O’Sullivan (Sparrow & The Workshop, Jill Lorean), as well as Iain Stewart (The Phantom Band, Pictish Trail), Rick’s folk singer sister Josephine Anthony, and even Rick’s wife and young daughters. It’s a luminous, unflinching and profoundly hopeful set of songs about loss and change, rebirth and re-emergence, the passage of time and the emotional dichotomies of life’s squeezed middle that makes for Rick’s most personal record yet.

Recorded in his parents’ house in Aberdeenshire where he had grown up, with Graeme Young at the controls and with family and friends contributing, To The Light Return is a deeply revealing body of work that sees Rick raise his craft to a whole new level. In part, by letting his guard drop, and singing directly to the experiences, emotions, tragedies and joys that meet him in a transitional phase of his trip along time’s infinite spiral, when life seems to take almost as readily as it gives. “This is certainly the most personal set of songs I’ve ever committed to record,” says Rick, “and that brings with it some vulnerability that I think will be really enjoyable to lean in to when it comes to playing live.” Not only do his sister, wife and children make their presence felt on the album, but, indirectly, even his late father. “It was spring when we recorded and the garden birds were in full voice,” Rick remembers. “My dad planted all the trees that brought them into that space, so in a funny way he’s contributing too, which feels really cool.”

Opener ‘Little Girl in a Lion’s Mane’ is a touchingly literal tune about parenthood and the comfort and sanctity of family, with a playful, Michael Hurley-esque folk feel. Set to a churning, foaming sea of piano and fiddle, ‘Big Dark’ address starkly the death of Rick’s dad, with words of assurance offered into the shadows of the great beyond: “gone to the dark / and you’ll always travel in my heart”. The joyful, lullaby-like ‘W.A.L.K.I.N.G’ by contrast turns its gaze to the generation only starting their journey, and the way kids can help rearrange us from the ground up in the best of ways. ‘Fine Remains’ is haunting finger-picked acoustic song of winter, work and renewal. Turning a ballad in the grand tradition cleverly on its head to celebrate not starry-eyed romance but the kind of faith and companionship that lasts, closer ‘Little Heart’ is, Rick says, “a really honest love song about the reality of being in a long-term relationship; when you are ageing with someone, and all the wonder and weirdness that entails… being vulnerable enough and trusting enough in your connection with someone to willingly deteriorate before their eyes.”