Produced and mixed by John 'Spud' Murphy (Lankum, black midi, caroline) at Dublin's Hellfire Studios, and featuring Lankum's Cormac MacDiarmada on banjo among a cast of Irish instrumentalists, 'Frozen Food Centre' is a poignant small-town vignette about childhood and adulthood, where home is a place to escape and there are ghosts in the supermarket aisles. A track that has "been in (Tom's) head for about seven years", it is one of the most honest and searching songs of his career.
“There's a Chris Marker quote, ‘I have been around the world several times, and now only banality interests me’," Tom says. “Places that aren’t on the map and may not ever be. Well-kept gardens, ring roads, clusters of identical houses. Ghouls ten years your senior seeping out of the cracks. They know your name and your habits, drifting under the floodlights in the car park.”
The accompanying short film, directed by James Hankins, follows the story of many unnamed characters and is dark, cold and grey, but at the same time a poignant visual depiction of unwavering human strength and the relentless will to carry on. “The heroism and resilience of people constantly amaze me,” says Tom. “How rich their lives are and how little we see of them. You never really escape your fate. Not really. Thank you to James Hankins for creating this for me.”
In 2019, Fleming released his debut album as One True Pairing - his first since the split of Wild Beasts, and an album described as "excellent" by The Quietus and praised by Clash for its "surprisingly confrontational" meditation on class frustration and self-despair.
Fleming's output has always explored ideas of masculinity - the sad and sexy music of Wild Beasts subverted accepted roles around young Northern men. Now older and wiser, his new music continues this theme from a place of newfound experience.
Watch his space for new music soon!
