One True Pairing releases new single "Human Frailty"

Today, One True Pairing, aka Tom Fleming, former Wild Beasts songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, releases new single “Human Frailty”, taken from his second solo album, Endless Rain - due out 25th October via Domino.

A gorgeously tender song of acceptance, “Human Frailty” is beautifully self-aware. “Well we try and we try and it has a good laugh at our expense,” says Tom. “It’s not a fight you win. That’s the thing about bravery, it’ll use you up. It doesn’t matter if you see it coming or not. I’ve been listening to a lot of country? In general this sort of wisened country/folk stuff suits me more as I get older.”

It was Christmas in Cumbria, and at the end of 2019 that Fleming felt that he had ran out of road. “It was off the back of a lot of personal difficulties,” he reflects, “a loss of income, a loss of house, everything. It rained solidly for about a week.” Fleming reflected on his life and watched the downpour. “The brown, mucky water rising and the creatures that live in it.”

Today, Fleming’s reflection and hard-won self-revelation has fed into Endless Rain - the startlingly intimate and gorgeously realised new album from One True Pairing.

Recorded in Dublin in 2022 with producer John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, black midi, caroline) at Dublin’s Hellfire studios, Endless Rain boldly restates Fleming’s vision with an autumnal, searching and often uplifting record shaped by the backgrounds in traditional music, classical and noise rock of its players. Fleming’s long term collaborator Josh Taylor-Moon arranged, engineered and played on the record, as well as features by Lankum’s Cormac MacDiamarda and Percolator’s Eleanor Mylor.

“I didn’t write anything for ages and then it all happened at once,” says Fleming of the remarkable burst of creativity that first led to Endless Rain, “that hasn’t happened before. “Frozen Food Centre” has possibly been in my head for about seven years and I couldn’t find a way to get it out. But “Be Strong”, “Tunnelling”, they were fifteen minute jobs.” What came out was in turn tender, reflective and autobiographical. Fleming still seems bewildered about how it all came out, and where from. “Frozen Food Centre” in particular, clocking in at 7 minutes, is a poignant small-town vignette about childhood, where home is a place to escape and there are ghosts in the aisles of supermarkets.

Other album highlights include “Frozen Food Centre”, a poignant small-town vignette about childhood and “Prince of Darkness”, which is something close to a dour northern lullaby.

Fleming’s output has always looked at ideas around masculinity - the sad and sexy music of Wild Beasts subverting accepted roles around young Northern men. Now older and wiser, Endless Rain uses that base to explore new territory, stepping back, looking deeper and using newfound experience to create something else entirely.

Live dates:

• 16th Nov – Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London

Tickets

Listen to previously released singles here: “Frozen Food Centre”, “Be Strong”, “Mid-Life Crisis” and “A Landlord’s Death”.