TOM Chaplin's getting over a chesty cough, you know, the one that's been doing the rounds, and says he's had to be propped up for the last couple of shows on his autumn UK tour.

Running on vapers he calls it, or could that be vapours of the Vicks variety, which would be a far cry from his maelstrom year in 2014 when cough medicine wasn't the only thing he was taking. Not by a long way.

The Keane frontman is currently promoting his first solo album, The Wave, in which he addresses his struggle with personal darkness and redemption.

Those songs were aired at Leeds City Varieties on October 26 and can be heard at York Barbican on May 12 on his next tour in Spring 2017.  

"I wrote the song Quicksand for my daughter Freya," he says. "It refers to my experience of life which has been one of massive highs and abject lows.

"I didn't want to give her a sugar-coated version of reality, I've tried to articulate that life goes up and it goes down, you have to roll with it.

"The pay-off comes in the chorus when I say whenever you need me I'm there for you."

He wasn't there for her two years ago. In fact as the problems crept in, Chaplin became increasingly detached, not very trustworthy at looking after Freya, he admits; more or less an absentee father.

"In the darkest days of my addiction I couldn't make that promise to her, so it feels very poignant now to be able to say that in a song."

Perhaps in reality Quicksand is a thank-you letter to Freya. As part of Chaplin's rehab he learned that for all his fame and fortune, nothing counted for anything apart from his wife and daughter.

York Press:

Tom Chaplin: "I've done a lot of soul searching"

The madness had to stop. "At the end of that year my wife said to me 'I want to tell you that I love you, because I don't know if this will be the last chance I'll get'. Then in a moment of clarity, in January last year, when I was lost in this trunk of addiction, I suddenly thought if I wake up tomorrow I really need to start changing.

"I was lucky, a lot of addicts end up killing themselves before they get to that point. Death gets in the way first."

Chaplin insists The Wave is not an album about addiction. It starts there, but ultimately deals with coming back from the brink and learning to appreciate life again. Songs like See It So Clear and The Wave are about finding a sense of resolution and being at peace with the world.

"I've done a lot of soul searching and to get well from crippling addiction, I've changed as a person. You have to start looking at yourself, figuring out your relationship with the people around you. Through that process I began to understand a lot of things I wanted to talk about through my songs.

"It was never an intention at the outset, but you can listen to the album like a story."

Chaplin also offers an interesting insight into the root cause of his problems, regarding being a band member as something of an "elaborate defence".

"You stand on stage and in that hour and a half you entrance people and also feel entranced," he says. "The world seems OK, but the rest of the time you feel very vulnerable and insecure.

"For me the most important thing was figuring out how to like myself again, so that when I'm on the other side of performances, being swept up in the magic of being in a band, I could loaf around, enjoy my own company and not push the meltdown button."

Tom Chaplin's The Wave is released on the Universal/Island label; he will play York Barbican on May 12 2017. Box office: 0844 854 2757, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.