Released: May 19
In the five years since he released his debut album, ‘Black Country Disco’, Wolverhampton-born pop purveyor Tom Aspaul has built an impressive catalogue of material that blends the ideals of manufactured pop with the reality of being an independent, self-funded artist in the 21st century.
That theme was central to his previous outing, 2022 LP ‘Life In Plastic’, which leaned heavily into a 1990s-inspired Europop sound; now, the singer-songwriter steps back in time another two decades and draws inspiration from the 1970s on ‘Cabin Fever’, Aspaul’s third album that was conceived in the wake of a hallucinogenic Midsommar experience in Sweden.
The result is unquestionably his most personal body of work to date, acting both as a travelogue documenting his Nordic adventure and delving deeper into the life and mind of the man behind the material with striking candour.
‘There is something to be said for facing your fears / I’ve been hiding it away for a million years’, he declares on opener Going To My Head, a brooding number that signals a change of pace that runs through the core of the record.
Midtempo Not My Place juxtaposes its mellow sound with a lyric detailing the rush of a hook-up, while the chaos of the vacation is contrasted with an ideological voyage through the musical icons of yesteryear on 70s Angels, namechecking Olivia Newton-John, Stevie Nicks, Barbra Streisand, and others whose music has proven influential to the artist.
Laced through the record are several allusions to his personal life. ‘I never ever got affection from the guys, no attention from anyone / I didn’t have a chance, just a fear of love and rejection / Another lonely young queer in a small town’, he sings on That Girl, one of several moments on the album that reflects upon his relationships as an LGBTQ+ man in his 30s. On Make Room For Me, he elaborates: ‘Nobody makes room for me / They just chase me instead’.
It’s laid out bare on Cabaret – ‘I came for the love / I stay for the cabaret / And every number breaks my heart’ – with pre-release track Drama expressing his desire to veer away from controversy: ‘Everybody knows / What he said, she said, except the boy that it’s all about / I just want a quiet life’.
Sonically, ‘Cabin Fever’ is Aspaul’s most nuanced offering to date and, as a body of work, a definite highlight from his long-running collaboration with co-producer Gil Lewis that feels like a natural progression in his artistic journey, drawing upon the past while signposting what’s yet to come. A captivating listen.
