If you’ve never heard Aaron West, you’re in for a treat… along with a long explanation. I’ll try to be brief, though.
Aaron West is the creation of Dan ‘Soupy’ Campbell from The Wonder Years. When endeavoring to learn guitar and write singer/songwriter type songs, Dan wanted to avoid using real life experiences as inspiration to avoid cannibalising material for The Wonder Years. His solution was to create Aaron West and give him the worst year of his life. In debut album ‘We Don’t Have Each Other’, Aaron faces the breakdown of his relationship following a devastating miscarriage and the death of his father. He goes on to lose his apartment when he hits rock bottom and finds himself living in a motel before having to skip town through lack of funds. If you want to be taken on the biggest emotional rollercoaster of your life… listen to that album. It’s bleak, it’s heartbreaking, it’s glorious.
We’re now two full albums and an EP into this character arc. Some things have gotten better, some things have gotten worse. It’s entirely up to you to catch up now.
While you’re working on doing that, let me tell you about new single ‘Paying Bills At The End Of The World’. This is the most “country” sounding song that Aaron has brought us. Acoustic mixed with slide guitars and frank lyrics that force you under a cloud. “I’ve been having that dream where I’m dying again, The one where I get sick and we can’t afford it, I’ve been walking around here with no health insurance, And we can barely keep the lights on as it is.” The song captures the melancholy of living paycheck to paycheck and the weight that puts on you when you have others to care for.
The instrumentals are lush and thick sounding – The Roaring Twenties are a backing band with numbers approaching a Roman legion. You wouldn’t be a million miles away to compare a full band show to Springsteen. Not that Glasgow have witnessed them… Aaron played a solo show at King Tuts and when he planned to play a full band show at St Luke’s, one of the band caught COVID which meant another solo show. This may or may not have put Glasgow in the history books, however…
This single is from the forthcoming album ‘In Lieu Of Flowers’ which comes out April 12th. Track five on this album is titled ‘Alone At St Luke’s’. You can bet your last penny that we’ll be listening to this track as soon as possible to see if it’s coincidence or if our little dog friendly bar venue is now canon in the Aaron West universe (as a side note, I was also at that show crying my eyes out since it was my first show since my own dad passed and that’s a big theme in Aaron’s music – maybe he’ll mention a fat man weeping at the barrier and I’ll be my own biggest hero).
Please do yourself a favour and listen to all of Aaron’s back catalogue before hearing this so you know the full story. You’re going to cry and I won’t apologise for that. But it’s worth the journey and seeing it live is all the more powerful.
The album ‘In Lieu Of Flowers’ is out April 12th.
Tour dates for the full band are:
MAY
17: MANCHESTER Deaf Institute
18: GLASGOW St Luke’s
19: LEEDS The Key Club
21: NOTTINGHAM Bodega
22: LONDON Underworld
23: BRISTOL Exchange
Tickets can be found here: https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/aaron-west
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