TENDER Announce Third Album ‘Flux’ With Lush new Single “Sprinkles”
April 19, 2024 BY Emma Orland
Rising UK indie duo TENDER have announced their upcoming third album Flux with stunning new single ‘sprinkles’, out now via Nettwerk.
The lead single from Flux, the LP which comes out later this year, ‘sprinkles’ is a typically lush and enigmatic production from the duo. Helmed by a muscly trip-hop groove, the track is elevated to a place of euphoria by lead singer James Cullen’s reverb vocals, which intermingle with delicate pitched-up samples and atmospheric synths.
Listen & Share: TENDER – sprinkles
https://tendermusic.ffm.to/sprinkles
The track is the follow-up to previous singles ‘come clean’ and ‘daydreamers’, which heralded their acclaimed 2024 comeback after two years and received BBC Radio 1’s Chillest Show with Sian Eleri, BBC Radio London’s Introducing show with Jess Izzat and further support such as ‘Track of the Week on 6 Music with Craig Charles and Huey Morgan show.
Speaking about the single’s themes, the duo explained that ‘sprinkles’ is about “Going through a life altering event with someone. Wondering if you feel the same about what has happened and if it will affect the love you share.”
Flux was written throughout the pandemic focusing around the journey of both band members, London/Brighton-based James Cullen and Dan Cobb. Following their second LP, Cullen was spending half his time in London and half in the States with his American partner. On the day he was set to fly back to the UK in late 2020 for visa reasons, he found out that he and his partner had fallen pregnant. As they weren’t married, he remained unable to re-enter the US due to COVID-related travel bans, unaware whether he would be able to be in New York for the birth of his first child.
“Coming back to London and not knowing when I could get out there was pretty wild,” he reflects. “We knew that we were going to inevitably end up together, but it was a question of how to navigate the process during that minefield. The next nine months were incredibly stressful and difficult.” Managing to get special dispensation from the US government due to his partner’s pregnancy, he arrived in New York a month before the birth in summer 2021, with the couple then bringing their newborn baby back to London, where they now live together and are married, in that October.
Discussing more around the album themes, Flux is defined as “the action or process of flowing or flowing out,” but also as a period of “continuous change”. The latter definition is why it’s the perfect title for TENDER’s third album. In the five years since the release of second album ‘Fear of Falling Asleep’, James Cullen and Dan Cobb moved out of the place they shared as housemates – Cullen lives in London, with Cobb now in Brighton – but also became fathers, with their lives dramatically changing in that time. Though the album’s emotional core is the most personal and intense of any TENDER album, these changes and revelations also make their loosest and most fun record yet.
Since the band’s inception, TENDER has specialised in walking that artful line between personal and the universal. The British duo’s acclaimed debut, Modern Addiction, charted the aftermath of a tumultuous breakup, earning rave reviews in the UK and US for its soul-baring candour, with Stereogum calling it “vibrant and entrancing”, while Metro hailed it as “stunning”.
The band’s debut album lead single ‘Nadir’ was an early career highlight and featured in the soundtrack of the Netflix smash To All The Boys I’ve Ever Loved. The LP followed a series of similarly celebrated singles and EPs that saw the duo rocket from an unassuming bedroom project to an online sensation seemingly overnight success. Overall the band have now amassed over 500 million streams across the DSP platforms, as well as boasting nearly 300K YouTube subscribers.
With the gorgeous ‘sprinkles’, TENDER expands on a new chapter in their musical journey that’s set to be bookended by their upcoming third album, out later this year. Be set to hear announcements around the band, as they are set to announce live shows – where it will the first time the group will perform live for the first time in a few years.
