James Acaster has released the first single with his band The Wow! Scenario – more than 20 years after forming it. 

He formed the outfit with longtime musician friend Graeme Wicks in Kettering in 2004 and called it a day there years later – but not before recording all of their songs.

A statement on Acaster’s website reveals: 'After three years of believing they were going to be one of the most important bands of all time, the duo had lost faith. They were playing poorly attended gigs every week and the response from the small audiences ranged from throwing shoes at the band to chasing them out of the car park and trying to punch their car. 

‘They were working extremely hard but making no progress. They’d both attended singing lessons every week since the band’s inception but still hadn’t reached the standard they’d hoped for when it came to harmonies or (in Acaster’s case) basic pitch. 

‘In the end, they had to accept The Wow! Scenario was an acquired taste – or at least it would be if they could fully execute the ideas they had in their heads. Which they could not.’ 

Ten years later, in January 2018, The Wow! Scenario returned to the studio to re-record the tracks; but they were not happy with the result. Another studio session took place in March 2023 when singers BC Camplight and Emma Daman performed the vocal parts. 

Now the album – called Stand in the Star. A Verse and a Chorus – has finally been mixed and will be released in October, when it will be available here.

The band got their name from a drunk audience member trying to tell them they didn’t have ‘the X factor’ but repeatedly getting the term wrong, telling them: ‘You don’t have the wow scenario, guys. You need to get the wow scenario.’

Acaster previously worked on the musical project called Temps, which featured a 40-strong musical collective which released the ten-track album Party Gator Purgatory in 2023

.

The Wow! Scenario’s first single, Zacuti, was released yesterday with an accompanying video on YouTube: 

The tracklisting for the album is: 

1. ‘Diving!’
2. ‘Once More!’
3. ‘Golf Socks!’
4. ‘Alpaca Spinner!’
5. ‘Reality!’
6. ‘Instructions!’
7. ‘Zacuti!’
8. ‘The Curse!’