Tom Speight

Tom Speight / Love & Light bio

Humans are capable of remarkable resilience. British artist Tom Speight, who has demonstrated plenty of this in his own life, acknowledges this on his sublime third album, Love & Light, a tribute to courage and strength of spirit.

This new collection of tracks was inspired by pivotal moments, from family strife to heartbreak and abandonment, and exhibits some of the most confident, refined songwriting of his career. Set against lush soundscapes of beautifully textured guitars, agile strings and bright piano notes, these songs delve into the wonders of new love; reach out to a beloved sister; celebrate a close friend’s good news. “I’ve touched on things in this record that I’ve never spoken about before,” he says. “It’s without doubt my most personal to date.”

Single “The One” will likely be a surprise to Speight’s longtime fans, in the very best way. Written for his older sister when she was in the midst of a divorce, it opens with the low thrum of bass and the thwack of the guitar, baritone rumbles mingling with falsetto croons as he asks: “How could you run away with the light/ Left me in the dark, stealing my heart/ How could you dance with the devil/ A lie, tell me it’s alright.” Those familiar with Dermot Kennedy’s dark, brooding pop might recognise the talents of Ivor Novello award-winning producer Carey Willetts, who works with Speight to give “The One” its air of menace, like a gathering storm. “This track feels unashamedly bold,” he says. “I’m a hopeless romantic, and this definitely also draws on my own previous relationships, where I thought someone was ‘the one’ and it turned out to be bad news.”

Love & Light is testament to Speight’s determination to make up for lost time. Tipped by publications including The Times, Telegraph and The Independent, he’s been a prolific artist from the very beginning. Upon graduating from the prestigious Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, he caught the attention of pop-rock band Keane, whose members offered to help produce his debut EP. From there, he moved to London and released a further six EPs in the space of two years, rapidly cultivating a devoted fanbase in thrall to his frank lyrical style.

Yet his music career to date has been a series of hurdles, including emergency surgery in 2014 and a lengthy rehabilitation process. “I basically lost most of my twenties dealing with health issues, being in and out of hospital,” Speight, who has Crohn’s Disease, explains. “I’ve got a better handle on things now, but I didn’t actually release my first proper song until I was 30. It’s been a very stop-start situation.” Despite this, Speight managed to release two albums during the pandemic, including his excellent debut Collide, which was produced in Devon with Chris Bond (known for his work on Ben Howard’s Mercury Prize-shortlisted I Forget Where We Were).

Fans of Fleet Foxes, Simon & Garfunkel and Bon Iver will have been drawn to the folk influences of Collide, with its gorgeous reverb and rousing harmonies giving the record a firelit glow. Songs such as “Waiting” and “Little Love” have a quasi-devotional feel, a wintry mysticism owed to the fact that each instrument was played live. Yet there are pop elements, too, in the propulsive rhythms of “Want You” and the swooning harmonies of “Willow Tree” – contributed by Speight’s longtime collaborator Lydia Clowes – the latter feeling oddly prescient of Taylor Swift’s critically adored Folklore and Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher.

“If This Is How the Story Ends”, then, feels like a natural successor to that sparse, sun-dappled folk sound, nodding to the gossamer-fine guitar work of Sufjan Stevens on 2015’s critically adored Carrie & Lowell. Speight’s voice here is an intimate caress carried by a summer breeze, yet it speaks more to the heady ache of August, its stillness and its heat. “How can we fix this?” he asks. “‘Cos I’m gonna miss this/ If this is how the story ends, I don’t believe in miracles.” Those celestial sprigs of piano keys and acoustic guitar, the whispering harmonies, bring balance to the song’s natural earthiness, rooted as it is in universal experiences of grief and heartbreak.

Songs such as “Let Go” and “Aftermath” are fascinating examples of how an artist can explore closure from alternate perspectives. The former is agitated, and finds him stalking back and forth like a caged beast, howling to be set free. His vocals are low and simmering, skulking through wintry gusts of synths and moody percussion: “Tell me, do you love me? Don’t go/ You treat me like a stranger, you know,” he curses. “Sometimes it gets so lonely, it hurts/ Just break my heart, the silence is worse.” Meanwhile on “Aftermath”, a duet with Clowes, Speight seems frozen in time, haunted by memories of the past. Even the intro recalls a lonely call into a desolate space; mournful sighs redolent of Michael Kiwanuka’s 2016 single “Cold Little Heart”.

“I feel like that one’s about the end of the last relationship I was in,” he says of “Aftermath”. Around the time he began working on the song, he and his current partner had spent much of lockdown watching shows such as Big Little Lies (which used Kiwanuka’s song as its theme) and the Eighties-set drama This Is Us – perhaps explaining his track’s sepia-tinged tones. “It wasn’t a very healthy one, so this is about coming out of the other side,” he continues. “What I really love about it is the soundscape, the production and Lydia’s voice on the chorus.”

Where Collider can be viewed as love letters written during a past relationship – moving for their intense vulnerability – Everything’s Waiting for You encapsulates the breathless anticipation that comes with hope, a fresh start. “I was in a new relationship, out of hospital,” Speight explains. “I think you can tell the live shows were picking up on that one; we wanted to make music to fill those spaces.” This explains the euphoric pop sound of the title track, with its glimmering piano and swirls of synths, building into a chorus that races forwards towards the horizon: “There’s a world out there for you.” On “Let the River Run” he demands, “give me everything you’ve got” with infectious enthusiasm, but there are tender moments too, such as “Shine with Me”, a gentle sigh of acoustic guitars and whispers of percussion.

This compassion transpires on Love & Light, perhaps most clearly on “Tomorrow”, written with Speight’s best friend, producer Rich Turvey (Oscar Lang, Blossoms). “He and his partner were trying for a baby, and this was written the day before their 12-week scan,” he says. There’s a stoicism to the driving rhythm, compounded by the lullaby piano notes and Speight’s warm, resonant vocals singing words of encouragement: “I keep dreaming for what tomorrow holds.” It’s a song that will resonate with anyone experiencing uncertainty for the future (a feeling that seems particularly pertinent for these fraught times), but for Speight, it holds its own powerful meaning. “The baby’s been born now!” he reveals.
And proving his ear for a captivating melody, Speight comes through with “Trick of the Light”, riffing on the “big power landscapes” of Bruce Springsteen and War on Drugs. Co-written with Matt Hales of Aqualung fame, this exhilarating track is a burst of pure joy, high on the alchemy created when two souls find each other. “A lot of previous relationships feel very connected – they fell apart as my health was declining,” Speight says. “And I wasn’t really expecting to meet someone again and be able to trust it.”

He wrote “Trick of the Light” after the first few dates with his partner: “I was like, ‘Oh god, this again! But at the same time hoping it’d be OK.” He didn’t actually expect to write this kind of track with Hales, he explains, noting the fellow musician’s reputation for devastatingly beautiful piano-based works. “I had three hours with him to write this, and we demo’d it in that time as well. It’s about that pure, thrilling period when you first meet someone and wonder, ‘Are they even real?’” As for the foot-stomping instrumentation: “We wanted to make it sound like I was hosting a carnival,” he grins. “It’s going to be so much fun to play live!”

At the very heart of Love & Light is the title song, dedicated to Speight’s older sister, Cathy. Like “Tomorrow”, it reaches out to a loved one with an emotional acuity that is startling for its candour. “My sister was the one who gave me my first guitar,” he explains. “She used to pick me up from school… sometimes she’d forget and be a bit late, but I didn’t mind.” On “Love & Light”, supple guitar picking brings to mind the dart and swoop of swallows in spring, a sign for a fresh start, new life, as he sings: “It makes me proud to see you now/ With all your kids gathered round/ You’ve come too far to turn back now/ And I love the walk home from school/ ‘Cos I never gave up on you.” This is what Love & Light is, at its core: words of unconditional love, powerful enough that they stay with you long after the final note.