Fast Trains – “Where The Ocean Greets The Sun”

Fast Trains is a solo project from Portsmouth-based songwriter Tom Wells, and his new single “Where The Ocean Greets The Sun” is out now as the first taste of his debut album, Escape to Our World, you can stram it here.

The song is about wanting to get away, leave things behind, and end up somewhere by the water. That’s not a groundbreaking idea, but Wells pulls it off because it never sounds forced. The central hook does its job well, it gets stuck in your head without trying too hard, and the line about pitching your boat into the water and going with the tide actually lands.

The production has some real depth to it. The song was recorded across a few different spaces, including a studio inside a working church, and you get a sense that the recording environment was taken seriously. Mixer Mikko Gordon handled the mix, and his experience shows. He has worked with Thom Yorke, IDLES, and Arcade Fire, so he knows how to make a song breathe without overcomplicating it.

Worth knowing too is that Wells wrote this during a two-week artist residency in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, at a house with a fair bit of musical history attached to it. The coastal setting clearly fed into the song. It has that open, unhurried feeling that’s hard to fake. If this is what the full album sounds like, it’s going to be worth paying attention to. Give Fast Trains a follow on social media so you don’t miss what’s coming next this year.