Best known for their 1980 chart-topping power pop hit “Turning Japanese,” the British new wave act The Vapors initially struggled to get the notice of labels. “Nobody knew how to get into a record label, and The Vapors were just a small band from Guildford, which is about 30, 40 miles from London, and we were just a little band, playing around,” the band’s bassist and founding member, Steve Smith, tells Post-Burnout.

“And I knew the songs were really good and I knew we were a good band, but no one had a clue on how to get into a record company, and, without a record company, you couldn’t really do anything, then.”

Eventually, the band would get the notice of the influential trendsetter Bruce Foxton, who was the bassist for the in-demand mod revivalist band The Jam. The Vapors got the opportunity to tour with The Jam, which helped them to get signed and release two records: New Clear Days in 1980 and Magnets in 1981.

Despite critical acclaim, the band called it a day after the release of Magnets and went their own way. In their time away from the spotlight, interest in their music persisted and a demand for a reunion never faded. In 2016, the band finally regrouped. “It doesn’t really seem that long,” Steve says of the past near-decade.

“In 2016, we only did four gigs and, in 2017, we probably only did, maybe, six shows. It was only really in 2017 that we started to work a lot more. So, it’s more like seven years, really, but it doesn’t even seem that long.”

Fittingly, the band also toured with From the Jam, a spiritual successor to The Jam featuring Bruce Foxton, which Steve feels was like a full-circle moment, “Especially because Bruce is still in From the Jam, and Bruce was the guy who discovered us, and Bruce managed us for a while,” he says. “I’ve kept in contact with Bruce over the years, and I still see Bruce socially, so it was really great. We love those boys. We had such a fun time touring with them.”

As the tour with From the Jam was happening in the spring of 2019, The Vapors had already recorded their comeback album, Together, which was expected to release the following year. “We had the album finished, I think, since probably March 2019, and it was scheduled for release in May 2020,” remembers Steve.

“So, it had already been finished for a year by the time it was going to come out, but then the record distributor said to us, ‘We suggest you postpone the album for at least six months because of the pandemic,’ but we were all like, ‘Well, we’ve been waiting a year for this to come out. We really want it to come out in May.’ And I think that kind of worked for us, because so many acts cancelled their releases, it left a little bit of space for us to nudge our way in.”

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the band’s momentum was halted. “We weren’t really doing anything,” Steve says of this time. “We weren’t allowed to meet up or anything. So, Dave [Fenton, their frontman] was writing songs, luckily, but we went months without seeing any of them, really.”

These songs would eventuate into the band’s new album, Wasp in a Jar, which was released today. “They’re pretty much all been written since the Together album came out,” Steve says of the album’s tracklist. “I think we had twenty songs that we demoed and then we picked the best fourteen.

“We always like to do that; to have more songs than we need, so the ones that we don’t think are quite ‘Up to it,’ we can leave off. We only really need fourteen for a CD, anyway, but the more songs you’ve got to choose from, the better, I think. They were all written in the last five years.”

While Together felt like the next album the band would have put out in 1983 if they had kept going, Wasp in a Jar is notably more stripped back and pure rock ‘n’ roll. Steve attributes much of that to how it was recorded. “This album was recorded in a different way,” he explains.

“It was much more about the three of us – me, Michael [Bowes, their drummer], and Dan [Fenton], the guitarist – were in the studio room, and then, in the control room, where we could see Dave through this big panel of glass, was him singing, and we, basically, played the songs live. And if we made any mistakes, we tried to fix them by playing over them and dropping in and dropping out, rather than digitally fixing it.

“So, we recorded very much as we would have done in 1979 or 1980, really. When we worked with Steve Levine [on Together], Steve was much more into the computer side of things, shall we say. […]  [Wasp in a Jar] It’s a bit less produced and a bit more organic and a bit more…I just think [the album’s producer] Mike Giblin captured the energy, really, that the band were giving off.”

But Steve makes it clear that the band are not adverse to new technology. “Obviously, everybody uses a lot more technology these days,” he says. “Most bands have some kind of backing thing going on. Even we do a tiny bit of that; I think we have one song where we run a bit off…something – Not tape, obviously, because tape doesn’t exist anymore in that field! [Laughs] Mainly the technology is different, and I don’t think there’s as many bands around as there used to be.”

Indeed, as The Vapors are now self-releasing their music, Steve appreciates this contrast to when they once required a label for distribution, stating, “It’s a democratisation of music, really, in that anyone can go and buy a computer for a few hundred quid and a music programme for a hundred quid and start making records, you know? And really good, quality stuff. And you can do that in your bedroom. We’ve done a few singles where we’ve just basically recorded them ourselves, and mixed and produced them ourselves.”

Since regrouping, the band have been touring relentlessly and are amazed by the variety of the people who turn out. “It’s brilliant,” Steve says. “There’s really an amazing amount of young people that come to the gigs, and [Laughs] it always amazes me! Most of them I talk to, they just say, ‘Well, we’re looking for something other than what’s around at the moment. We just think there’s something more real.’”

The Vapors have done a nationwide US tour as part of The Lost 80’s package. “Nostalgia is a very, very powerful thing,” Steve says of these tours. “You hear a song or the intro to a song and, instantly, you’re back to when that record was out, and it’s a powerful thing. And the thing that I love about the ‘80s shows is that you see different generations of people; you can see little kids with their parents and grandparents, and they’re all dancing around and digging the same band, and it’s actually a really nice thing.”

But love for The Vapors is not all based in nostalgia, as people are digging their new stuff, too. “I think the Together album is very popular,” Steve says. “People liked a lot of songs from that album, and they like us to play them.”

Throughout 2025, The Vapors will be consistently on the road. In March, they will headline a UK tour, before joining Scottish rock legends Big Country on their UK tour in April, and, finally, doing The Lost 80’s tour in the US in August.

We asked Steve what people could expect if they came along to those shows, and he responded: “We’ll be playing, I would say, a good few songs from the new album on the UK tour. Some songs off the new album on the Big Country tour. Probably no songs off the new album [Laughs] on the Lost 80s tour because they want the old songs!”

The Vapors’ latest album, Wasp in a Jar, is available to stream and purchase from today. You can keep up with the band’s music, live dates, and more through their website.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full, where we go into further discussion about everything discussed in the article, as well as talk about the renewed relevancy of the band’s debut album, New Clear Days, in recent times. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.