Gently Tender share new single ‘Love All The Population’ and announce debut album ‘Take Hold of Your Promise!’.
When you have a melting-pot as diverse and talented as the band Gently Tender, it’s always going to be great. A concoction of Palma Violets, The Big Moon and Broadside Hacks, what’s not to love? This new single is a brilliant amalgamation of all these shiny accolades and is demonstrative of musicians who seldom fail to provide their growing audience with innovative, authentic and compelling music.
Writing during the first lockdown, lead vocalist Sam Fryer notes that “like lots of people I had spent many hours reflecting on the togetherness of our existence pre-pandemic”. ‘Love All The Population’ is really a philosophical musing about our ever-changing and ever-volatile current climate. In their powerful accompanying video, the band, like most of us, look to the past as a source of nostalgic comfort. Following a valley of Neolithic stones which stretch across the Wiltshire countryside, you can almost hear the distant voice of Robert Wyatt or visualise the Stonehenge monument of Spinal Tap…
However, ‘Love All The Population’ is neither about Wyatt’s pigs nor Tap’s excruciatingly tight trousers, but about this more unattainable feeling of togetherness. Fryer says that “I was thinking a lot about the now-empty spaces – empty music venues particularly… So, this song was a bit of a lament to those.” It is easy to forget, or even repress these sobering thoughts that many, if not all of us had during the pandemic, which is why this new track is so visceral: reminding us to not lose track of the more important facets of our existence now that life has (seemingly for now) gone back to ‘normal’.
The quintet was joined at Rockfield Studios in Wales by producer Matthew E. White (Foxygen, Hiss Golden Messenger, Sharon Van Etten), who achieves an enormous perception of space on the track; fitting for a song which confronts these larger, existential issues that we all attempt to tackle in one form or another. What most excites me about this track, and the album to come, is this fearlessness, this unrepenting focus on the question: ‘Who am I?’
We are thrilled, here at So Young, to invite you to join us on this journey with Gently Tender. The band say it best themselves: ‘It’s a new beginning’.
‘Take Hold of Your Promise!’ is out on 26.08.22 via So Young Records. Pre Order the album here.
Issue Thirty-Seven is out now Ft. Porridge Radio, Crows, Folly Group, The Dinner Party, Automatic, Gently Tender, headboy and more. Buy in print here. Read the digital edition below.
