TENDER Shares Anticipated New Album ‘Flux’ + North American Headline Tour Begins 10/28
September 6, 2024 BY Bailey Vigliaturo
Stepping in a new sonic and lyrical direction, UK indie electronic duo TENDER arrive with their first album in five years, the rich, vibrant, and expertly executed, Flux, via Nettwerk.
Spanning eleven incredible tracks, this stunning body of work is from a time when both vocalist James Cullen and instrumentalist Dan Cobb introspectively assessed their position in music, discovering “what made them themselves” after becoming fathers for the first time.
“The record represents a period of huge change in our life where we both moved away from London, started families and had to learn a bit more about what made us ourselves now in these new lives we’d carved out,” explain TENDER. “Where was our place in this world?”
The album’s lead and previously unheard track “flux,” placed in the middle of the tracklist so “the rest of the songs to wrap around it almost like a centrepiece,” vividly encapsulates one of the unique challenges fatherhood posed during the Covid-19 pandemic for lead singer, James Cullen. The track is accompanied by a music video recorded in Joshua Tree National Park by Gary Turk and Daniel Cobb.
He explains the track’s narrative: “The day I found out I was going to be a father was the same day I was leaving New York and my soon-to-be wife to go home to London. I didn’t know the next time I would see her or how the future looked. This song is about that day, that journey to the airport and the thoughts going through my head.”
WATCH AND SHARE “FLUX” MUSIC VIDEO
Prior to the album’s track title, fans were graced with five brilliant singles from Flux. “cutting grass,” the album’s opener that was revealed in July, is about receiving undivided love but not giving it back. It balances danceability with eeriness, pairing acoustic instruments with an ecosystem of synths that form everything from its mechanic beat to its whirring, muffled melodies. The LP’s second track, “sprinkles,” carries a muscly trip-hop groove, elevated to a place of euphoria by James’s reverberated vocals, which intermingle with delicate pitched-up samples and atmospheric synths.
The third track on the album, “daydreamers,” is a bouncing groove featuring more playful pitched-up vocal samples, sweet synth flourishes and an infectious funk bassline. Cullen tops it all off with a plaintive vocal about devotion: “You don’t have to love me every single day / Just love me when it matters and baby I’m okay.” “come clean” is a typically lush and enigmatic production from the duo, with lead singer James Cullen’s vocals converging with samples and synth-based atmospheres over another clean trip-hop beat.
With “go steady” the duo mentions it’s about “toxic masculinity and calling out people for their shit.” Centred around a meaty trip-hop groove, the track is elevated by elegant string melodies and atmospheric vocal chants as lead singer James Cullen intones dark truths about the male psyche.
The release of Flux marks the start of a new tour through the US and UK from TENDER. It starts on October 28th at Madame Lou’s in Seattle, WA. Notable stops include a performance at The Echo in Los Angeles on November 3rd and a show at Racket NYC in New York on November 19th, concluding on December 9th at the legendary Lafayette in Camden, London.
Flux, the fantastic third from the tantalising TENDER, is a huge return from them after a life-changing few years. An exciting pivot into new sonic and lyrical territories re-telling rich stories more vividly than ever, it’s the start of a new chapter from a wildly talented pair who have tons of tales to tell.
LISTEN/SHARE FLUX LP:
