The London outfit are a septet now, and the extra bodies earn their keep. After a long silence since 2019, broken only in May by "Restless City" with Rebecca Downes, the band have come back sounding like people who have spent a decade in vans and sweaty back rooms and learned precisely which parts of the night matter. Their core line-up has held together since 2018. You can hear it in the way nobody crowds anybody else, which is rarer than it should be.

At six minutes and forty-nine seconds, "Why ?" asks for patience, and it repays every second. This is a song about love found and love lost, about the slow, grinding regret of replaying what was. Stef Allsebrook, who handles lead vocals and lead guitar, calls it a very human story and a life-changing event many people have lived through. He sings it that way, with the weathered ache of a man who has stopped pretending he's over it. His voice never grandstands. It cracks and rasps where it ought to, and it knows that restraint cuts deeper than volume.

Then the guitars arrive. Allsebrook and his fellow lead guitarist Stas Melian trade searing, propulsive lines that snarl and sting without sliding into the self-indulgent noodling that has ruined so many blues-rock epics. Think of two boxers who respect each other, circling, jabbing, landing a hook only when it counts. Beneath them, Leslie Fleischman's bass and Jos Henrit's drums keep a rolling, heavy-footed groove, the sort that moves the floor before it moves the feet.

The real distinction is in the colour. Dave Ferguson's Hammond organ swells and prowls through the arrangement with an r'n'b swagger, a warm, church-by-way-of-the-pub glow that lifts the song out of the ordinary. Then come the horns. Omid Amiri's tenor and alto and Lottie Beattie's baritone weave through the blues-rock foundation like smoke through a low-ceilinged club, adding muscle and a mournful sweetness at once. Beattie, who also lends her voice, gives the band a second flavour when it's needed. The big-band grit is genuine: brass and keys are used as part of the engine, and none of it feels like decoration.

Most bands this size would be tempted to throw everything at the wall. JFK Blue show better manners. Each instrument gets its moment and then steps aside, and the whole thing builds with the confidence of players who know exactly how long a heartbreak takes to unfold. That running time, which would sink a lesser song, becomes the point. Regret doesn't resolve in three and a half minutes, and neither does this.

Stylistically, it sits comfortably alongside the great British blues-rock lineage, from the smoky club traditions of the 1960s to the pub-rock grit that followed. Yet it never sounds like a museum piece. The playing is too alive and too lived-in for that, and the emotion is too plainly felt.

Seven years is a long time to leave a band's admirers waiting, and "Why ?" justifies the delay. It is the second glimpse of a still-untitled album, and it whets the appetite considerably. If the rest of the record matches this standard of musicianship and heart, JFK Blue may well have made something special.

Play it loud, preferably after midnight, and preferably with someone you shouldn't have let go.