The sound sits in the roomy territory between pop-rock and alternative rock, and Roy makes no secret of his sources. The Beatles taught him how a melody should behave, while Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots taught him how loud it can be while behaving. Guitars drive forward with that familiar 1990s urgency, the kind that once soundtracked a thousand car journeys with the windows down. Yet the production is gleaming and contemporary, and the occasional nod towards the modern Christian rock of Brandon Lake, Zach Williams and Phil Wickham gives the chorus a stadium-sized lift. It is a canny blend, and he never lets the polish sand away the grit.

Then there is the voice. Roy sings with passion and conviction, with the faint rasp of a man who has lived through the verses he is delivering. He does not oversing or reach for histrionics. When the melody soars, he soars with it, and when the song needs restraint, he holds back. That balance is rarer than it sounds, and it keeps the whole thing believable.

Believability matters here, because "The Morning Light" is a song about faith, hope and renewal. Roy came to Christianity in 2018, and the experience has reshaped his writing, which now circles redemption, surrender, doubt and perseverance. Cynics may brace themselves for a sermon, but the song is not one. Its subject is the moment when darkness begins to loosen its grip, and that is a feeling anyone can recognise, churchgoer or not. The lyrics do not claim that difficult seasons never arrive. They insist only that such seasons do not get the last word. It is a modest and generous message, and the music carries it without strain.

The video is where the song's title becomes literal, and it is handsomely done. Roy sings straight to camera with real fervour, set against sweeping, beautiful landscapes while shafts of morning sun break across the frame. The images do what the lyric promises, with light slowly winning the argument. It is a simple idea, and a risky one, since a singer pitted against scenery can look small or self-conscious. Roy looks neither. His conviction holds the foreground while the horizon does its quiet work behind him, and the pairing of voice and view feels earned rather than borrowed from a stock-footage library. Rock videos have long been drowned in smoke machines and self-regard, so a clip that simply wants to be uplifting feels almost refreshing.

Roy has been building his catalogue independently, first under the names JFR Project and JFR, and his streams now approach the 50,000 mark. That is hardly the stuff of chart dominance, but it is the honest arithmetic of a working songwriter earning his audience one listener at a time. On the evidence of this single, those numbers deserve to grow. The hooks are sturdy, the arrangement is confident, and the sincerity is the sort that cannot be faked, however hard some try.

It is not a record that reinvents anything, and it does not pretend to. Its ambition is to take a well-loved sound and fill it with a message worth hearing, and on that count it delivers handsomely. Listeners who have trudged through a bleak patch and are still squinting for the horizon will find a companion here, one who sounds glad to be walking beside them.

"The Morning Light" is a bright, sturdy and thoroughly likeable piece of work. Roy has made the sound of a door opening and a curtain being drawn back, and the video lets the sunshine pour in.