Best Is Yet To Come: The Race Deliver an Anthemic Comeback Single From Their FAMILY EP
A Reading Alternative Rock Band’s Widescreen Comeback, Built on Faith and Fatherhood
Reading’s The Race have never chased trends. Best Is Yet To Come makes that plain. Its widescreen, guitar-driven melody recalls the sound that once earned them a BBC Radio 1 session at Maida Vale. The single is the lead track from their forthcoming FAMILY EP. It balances melodic pop rock hooks against alternative rock drive, and its lyrics stay rooted in faith and the everyday weight of parenthood. It is the sound of an established band stepping back into the light with something to say.
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How Best Is Yet To Come Balances Big-Room Melody With Restraint
Released on 29 May 2026, Best Is Yet To Come sits where The Race have always felt most at home. That home is the melodic, alternative edge of indie rock. Ringing guitars and a steady, building arrangement give the track its lift. Meanwhile, the melody stays hummable enough to carry a chorus a crowd could sing back. The band call it a fusion of alternative rock and melodic pop rock, and that reading holds up on first listen. There is grit in the guitars and polish in the hooks, yet neither one cancels out the other.
What keeps the song from feeling like straight revivalism is its restraint. The Race let the arrangement breathe before it opens up. They favour a slow climb over an instant payoff. That patience is where the indie Americana influence shows, because the track values songwriting and mood over spectacle.
The guitars carry a familiar, reverb-rich warmth. It nods to retro guitar pop without tipping into pastiche. So the production keeps everything in service of the song. It is anthemic without shouting. This is a single that trusts its melody to do the heavy lifting, and it rewards close headphone listening as much as a loud car stereo.
The Race’s Hard-Won Pedigree, From a Maida Vale Session to Critical Acclaim
The Race are not newcomers. The Reading outfit built their name the difficult way. They earned a coveted BBC Radio 1 session at Maida Vale, and they picked up critical support from NME and Drowned in Sound along the route. Those same outlets reached for heavyweight reference points. In fact, they set The Race alongside The National, U2 and Arcade Fire.
Those comparisons are worth unpacking, because they are sonic rather than superficial. Like The National, The Race build songs that gather weight slowly. They trade flashy choruses for a mood that settles in and stays. The U2 comparison lands in the guitars, in the ringing, delay-touched lines that reach for the back wall of a room. The nod to Arcade Fire fits the communal, singalong quality of the melodies. In other words, a chorus here is meant to be shared rather than simply heard. So Best Is Yet To Come becomes the work of a band that has absorbed those lessons and now writes with the calm confidence of experience.
The single has already found early champions in the indie press. AnalogueTrash tagged its moody, restrained indie rock. Meanwhile, Rock Era Magazine read it as a comeback about watching the people you love navigate the peaks and troughs of life.
Faith, Parenthood and the Songwriting Behind Best Is Yet To Come
For all its melodic reach, Best Is Yet To Come is anchored by what The Race are singing about. The band write from a point of view of faith. Here, that perspective folds into something broader, the responsibilities and small revelations of parenthood. The result is mature songwriting that treats hope as hard-won rather than automatic. So the big chorus earns its emotional footing. The title itself reads like a line spoken to a child or to a younger self, a promise offered in the middle of ordinary life.
That combination makes the track unusually versatile. It speaks to listeners who grew up on noughties indie and still want that guitar-forward rush. At the same time, it reaches an audience in the Christian music sphere looking for songs that carry conviction without sacrificing craft. The Race have always sat a little outside the obvious lanes of the UK indie scene. Yet Best Is Yet To Come turns that in-between position into a strength rather than a compromise. In the end, it is a song at ease in a festival tent and on a Sunday playlist alike.
IndieMusic.News’s curator team: “We keep coming back to how Best Is Yet To Come earns its uplift. The Race resist the easy shortcut and let faith, fatherhood and a genuinely melodic chorus carry the weight. It is the rare anthem that feels lived-in rather than staged.”
Where to Stream The Race and What the FAMILY EP Promises Next
Best Is Yet To Come is the lead single from the upcoming FAMILY EP, so it works as both a statement and a signpost. It reintroduces a band whose story is clearly far from finished. It also gathers up the threads of their history, the Maida Vale session, the press acclaim and the big-room guitar sound. Then it points them towards a new chapter. If the single is the tone-setter, the EP arrives with real anticipation behind it. For listeners who value melody, songcraft and a little conviction in their indie rock, it is an easy recommendation.
Stream and save Best Is Yet To Come across Apple Music, Bandcamp and SoundCloud. You can also follow The Race on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X. Better still, you can find every link in one place at their official site.
