Tender

AGE RESTRICTION: Only Ages 21+ can purchase tickets for this show. NO REFUNDS/EXCHANGES for anyone underage who purchases or attempts to use these tickets.

Doors: 7:00 PM

Show: 7:30 PM

Tender

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.

Since forming in 2015, the duo have become masters of balancing bedroom pop intimacy with festival-sized ambition, with their superbly composed alt-pop songs gaining fans in NPR, Stereogum and beyond as well as hundreds of millions of streams. A steady progression and refinement of their sound followed on debut album ‘Modern Addiction’ (2017) and follow-up ‘Fear of Falling Asleep’ (2019).

The period following their second album then saw Cullen 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.

This intense, emotionally exhausting period of time is documented on the album’s hazy, beautiful title track. “Nobody but you,” the refrain repeats, with the idea of what’s important in life truly coming into focus. It’s a lyrical perspective that defines the album, and though flux can feel disorientating, it also puts things into perspective and makes prioritising far easier. “All of this stuff happening and the changes that both of us have gone through inevitably finds its way into the music,” Cullen says. “We didn’t set out to write about this stuff necessarily, but it definitely ended up making its way in here.”

“We’re not the most open people in real life,” Cobb adds, “so having the outlet to say something really emotive and honest through the music is really useful.”

https://tender.bandcamp.com/album/flux