'Wasp in a Jar' is the 2025 album from New Wave stalwarts The Vapors. With all songs written by the band over the previous year or so, the album was recorded and produced by Michael Giblin (The Split Squad) at Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania in September 2024 and mastered at Rare Form Mastering by Greg Reierson. Like all three previous Vapors releases, this album conveys an individual feeling of its own, both lyrically and musically. The title derives from a line in the song 'Forever & Ever' but it also describes perfectly the high velocity, guitar and bass heavy punked up tempo that runs through a number of the songs whilst conjuring up an image of bottled-up anger that runs through a number of the album's lyrics. Dave Fenton's lyrics are as observational, poetic and open to interpretation as ever. If 'New Clear Days' (1980) mixed commentary about the mundanities of late '70s/early '80s life combined with the paranoia stirred up by the state of the world as it was back then, 'Magnets' (1981) brought a more personalised study and 'Together' (2020) a joyful celebration of the eventual reunion, then this album is a combination of all three. All of which are glued together here by current personal and global commentaries, all performed by a band full of ability, confidence and positivity and very clearly enjoying themselves, 45 years on from their recorded debut. Best known for their major worldwide 1980 hit 'Turning Japanese', The Vapors originally split in 1981 after two short years producing six singles, two albums, three major US tours and an Australian tour, and countless shows in the UK. After a 35-year hiatus, the band reformed for a series of four shows in Ireland and England in 2016 which were so well received that they continue to tour extensively, with over 160 gigs played since, with a comeback album, 'Together', in 2020 and several download singles released along the way.
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