Interview: Flyte Announce Third Album & Discuss "Tough Love," Marking Musical Expansion and New Takes on Songwriting

The second single off Flyte’s self-titled third album, “Tough Love” is all about learning to love and learning to do it right.

Stream: “Tough Love” – Flyte

Happy endings aren’t easy, but they’re always worth it.

Flyte’s second single from their newest album, “Tough Love” featuring Laura Marling, sets the scene for shedding old habits in love, moving towards a renewed perception of partnership and stability. Its lyricism rings true like a promise, sung back by Laura Marling with the same optimism.

“Tough Love” opens with rhythmic guitar that builds towards breezy vocals, simultaneously creating the Flyte soundscape – a welcome change from their previous work yet familiar enough to feel as if we are returning to an old record we’ve heard on repeat for years. “How do we start healing with my hands all over your heart?” Laura Marling lends the perfect female vocal to the track, singing in response and then in harmony to the hook, “Are you for real, tough love?” as the production builds and bubbles in the final bridge before crumbling down to a sweet release.

Will Taylor from Flyte explains, “This song asks how two people might rattle free from a closed loop of bad habits and codependent tendencies. It takes two people to prop up an unhealthy relationship, so a duet seemed appropriate and Laura Marling felt like the perfect fit.”

Flyte have also announced their third album, the self-titled Flyte, set to release October 27th via Nettwerk Music Group. Their third album welcomes new sounds, a slew of collaborators who are trailblazing their way through the industry right now, and a new intimacy never seen before from the band’s storytelling. Accompanied by singles “Defender” and “Speech Bubble,” “Tough Love” is the second single from their upcoming release.

Flyte sat down with Atwood Magazine to discuss the creative conception of “Tough Love,” recent ventures, and where they’re at as musicians and songwriters in the midst of their upcoming album.

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Stream: “Tough Love” – Flyte

A CONVERSATION WITH FLYTE

Atwood Magazine: Hello! Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us at Atwood - I’m such a huge fan, and “Tough Love” is just beautiful! What was the creative process like making the track?

Flyte: Ahh well thank you for having us, we’re big fans of yours, so it’s a real pleasure. In regards to the creative process, we keep the actual songwriting and recording incredibly separate these days. When we write we don’t make demos. Computers and production are distractions for us, the words and melody have to work right just on an acoustic guitar. That way, when we go into the recording studio, every musical arrangement, production decision, and full band performance is a fresh discovery.

When you listen to the new record you’re hearing us play the arrangement for the first time, sometimes it’s even the first take we did before we even realised the tape was rolling. There are wobbly moments and sometimes beautiful moments, much like the early stages of a relationship, which is what we were trying to emulate, I suppose. It’s worth adding that we couldn’t have pulled that approach off without a super experienced team of musicians and studio wizards around us – it was quite an old-fashioned luxury to record in that way, which we’re very grateful for. You can actually watch us piece the song together in the studio documentary and you’ll see how on-the-spot all the decision-making was.

The synergy between you and Laura Marling is really magic – tell us a bit more about how this collaboration came about and what it was like to work with her.

Flyte: Well, Laura is one of those artists that has always managed to remain pretty mysterious, private even, so it felt like a rare thing to have her drop by in the way she did. There are only a handful of artists who can stand in front of a microphone and instantly make it sound like a record you’ve known for years and she’s definitely one of them. We’d actually not met before she came to sing her part, we’d just pen-palled a bit. She had shared a song of ours during the pandemic and we reached out after that. Lockdown really was a time of artists connecting with each other. We hadn’t planned on that second verse being sung as a female response, but once she was singing it, it felt like a deliberate part of the narrative, like it couldn’t have been any other way.

What does this song mean to you?

Flyte: It means a number of things really, I’d say it in terms of its sentiment, it’s the furthest away from the general themes of the record. It shows a willingness to dislodge old codependent habits that have hurt relationships in the past. I will say it’s a lot darker than how we feel, and it’s more of a throwback to another time.

Did you have any influences for this track?

Flyte: Purposefully or not we didn’t really listen to other music when making this record. I think it can be great to reference other art when making your own, it can send you in different directions you wouldn’t have otherwise gone in and can help broaden your palette. But with this record we wanted to remain entirely ourselves, just put one foot in front of the other and let the song tell us where to go.

This Is Really Going To Hurt dealt with themes of love and loss. I really like that this upcoming album teases more of the earnest aspects of love, it sort of feels like a full circle. What can we expect from the new album?

Flyte: We always talked about this new album acting as the antithesis of This Is Really Going To Hurt, the doc leaf to the nettle if you don’t mind a nature metaphor. It stems from a new and happier chapter in my and Nick’s life. Post-pandemic, we really broadened our friendship group of musicians and my relationship with Billie Marten also began. Billie and I moved in together and the songs all stem from that really. It’s a piece of work rooted in love, friendship and maturation, London and our flat are big characters in it.

“Written in a Dark Cave, Recorded in the Sunshine”: Flyte Sink & Soar on 'This Is Really Going to Hurt'

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What does this new string of releases symbolise to you as artists and musicians?

Flyte: It really represents a version of ourselves that finally feels truly natural and relatively stress-free, a way of expressing ourselves that we know we can sustain indefinitely and that’s why we’ve self-titled this record. It’s as if everything starts from here.

You’ve teased Bombay Bicycle Club and M Field as other collaborators on the upcoming album. What is it like to bring more collaborators onto your projects?

Flyte: It’s a joy, really. Because we started as a fairly traditional four-piece, which can feel quite insular and oftentimes physiologically unhealthy, having this revolving door of musical collaborators drop in and out of the live shows and recording sessions is deeply refreshing. Suren De Sarem from Bombay Bicycle Club has been a beautiful live drummer for us over the last few years. M Field and I lived together and is one of the great guitarists and writers of our generation in my opinion. Will Rees from Mystery Jets, Jess Stavely-Taylor from The Staves, Billie Marten, Laura Marling, somehow all these people that we’ve been such fans of over the years, have all been blessing Flyte with their talent and their presence. We’re not going to question it in case we jinx it.

And what do you hope your audience will gain from these new songs, specifically “Tough Love”?

Flyte: We’re hoping our audience will embrace this new phase in our writing as it’s the work that we’re most proud of. With any luck, the nakedness of the music will mean it can last a really long time and doesn’t get stuck in its era. Also, just fundamentally that it speaks to people’s own experiences and they feel less alone because, in the end, that’s all we’re really ever aiming for.

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