Chosen by Monk
Our latest #DailyPick comes from a band who, it could possibly be argued, don’t actually exist… Aaron West is the fictional alter-ego of The Wonder Years frontman Dan ‘Soupy’ Campbell, who uses the project to interweave real life experiences into conceptual storyline mirroring his own. New single ‘Paying Bills At The End Of The World’ is the prelude to the forthcoming third chapter in this saga, the album ‘In Lieu Of Flowers’.
The Roaring Twenties project traces it’s roots back to 2014, when Campbell used it to extrapolate his feelings on what had been the worst year of his life, reflected in the mirror of the fictional West’s tales of profound loss – grief, divorce and miscarriage – via his 2014 debut, ‘We Don’t Have Each Other’, and 2016 susbsequent ‘Bittersweet’ EP.
2019’s ‘Routine Maintenance’ began a new chapter for Aaron, albeit short-lived. After a bar fight lands him in jail and he has no one to call, Aaron heads to Los Angeles for a fresh start where he occupies his time between crappy jobs and open mic nights. On the road playing gigs, he forms a band and they start to gain some traction before another blow hits his family––the loss of his brother-in-law. He finds a new purpose in the aftermath; “I’m going to be someone you can count on for a change,” he sings on the album’s closing title track.
The new album picks up where ‘Routine Maintenance’ left off, starting from the solo tours that Campbell himself went on shortly after its release––on stage, he talked about leaving the band to care for his grieving sister Catherine and nephew Colin, but that solo touring felt like shit. The band – that’s The Roaring Twenties not The Wonder Years, in case you’re losing track of the plot – soon got back together, as documented on their ‘Live From Asbury Park’ album recorded over the course of two December 2019 shows.
In the interceding years, and mainly through the intervention of Covid pandemic, Aaron is forced to finally tend to the wounds he’s ignored for over a decade, and that brings us to ‘In Lieu of Flowers.’ This lead single, ‘Paying Bills at the End of the World’, reflects the triumphant kind of melancholy that colours the entire album: a bleak, blue-collar ballad about living paycheck-to-paycheck, set on Long Island where Aaron retreats to when he and his band can no longer tour to make a living during the pandemic.
Campbell describes the Aaron West project as “both a band and a story” and ‘In Lieu Of Flowers’ as both an album and a concept opera… an ode to the underdog.
“What makes the storytelling come alive is the buy-in”, he explains, comparing the project to pro-wrestling.
“There’s this arena full of people and they know that person in the ring isn’t an undead zombie mortician. It’s a guy, his name is Mark, but they buy into it because that mass suspension of disbelief is where the magic is.”
- .’In Lieu Of Flowers‘ is due to be released on 12 April.