On ‘FLUX,’ their first LP in five years, UK electropop duo TENDER are back with songs about love and parenthood, set to a dazzling combination of synths, beats, and vocal loops.

Stream: ‘FLUX’ – TENDER

Many of us have stories of the unique trials we faced during the COVID pandemic, and James Cullen, one-half of the electronic-pop duo TENDER, is no exception.

When the pandemic hit, he was splitting his time between London and visiting his partner in New York, and on the day he was traveling back to the UK because of restrictions on his visa, they found out they were expecting their first child. But because of COVID travel limitations, it would take a long time for him to get back to the US to visit his pregnant partner.

“I didn’t know when I would be able to get back again,” Cullen says. “It was a lot happening in a very short space of time. It was very stressful.”

Eventually, Cullen and his partner were reunited, and Cullen, along with Dan Cobb, who together make up TENDER, wrote about the experience on the title track of their new album, FLUX, which is out now via Nettwerk Music Group.

The song “flux” is surprisingly upbeat given the difficult situation the lyrics recount. A choir of voices sing a wordless, soulful melody, and a laid-back drum loop anchors the song as James repeats the main vocal hook: “Nobody, nobody but you.”

As the track unfolds, it expertly balances the pain of being separated from those you love with the nervous excitement and joy that emerge with the realization that you will soon be a parent for the first time.

I don’t even know your name yet
Haven’t even seen your face yet
Two hundred something days left
Wouldn’t do this for
Nobody, nobody but you

Back in London feels so distant
Sick of blowing up the mattress
Scared to death I’m going to miss it
Hold on baby, I’ll be coming home soon

Beyond that trying moment in time, the album title FLUX represents the period of intense change that has taken place for Cullen and Cobb in the five years since the release of their 2019 album Fear of Falling Asleep. Since that previous record, both Cobb and Cullen have become fathers, and they have gone from being housemates to living separately as they both transitioned to parenthood.

“We both have kids now, so we can’t just make music at a whim anymore,” Cullen says of how his life has changed. “It’s a bit more focused, and when I sit down to make music, I’m really aware that I’m using that time proactively.”

Even with all of these changes, the duo’s chemistry and musical bond is just as strong as ever. Flux contains the band’s most intimate and personal lyrics, and a musical range that takes us from stadium anthems to bedroom pop. It’s an album with its own character and place in TENDER’s discography, but it’s also a set of songs that will easily appeal to fans of the band’s previous work.

“It was almost like us trying to recapture what we were doing before,” Cobb says of getting back into the studio. “It was about trying to find our place in the world. It was just nice to get back to it.”

At one end of Flux’s musical spectrum, there’s “go steady,” a maximalist electronic track full of melodic synth hooks and chanted vocal loops, along with massive kick drums and hand claps. At the same time, the song boasts slightly cryptic yet poetic lyrics:

Easy man
Take a breath
Have a moment
Steady hand
Heaven sent
Move over
In your own, own time
When you’re ready
Should have known to draw the line
Go steady

“It has more power behind it than most of the other songs,” Cobb says of the production on “go steady.”

“And lyrically, it’s about toxic masculinity and the world my daughter is eventually going to grow up in, and how that scares me,” Cullen explains.

The front half of Flux is full of this kind of energetic electronic pop. Opening track “cutting grass” starts the record off strong, with an intricate instrumental and propulsive beat. TENDER have always stood out for their exciting and sophisticated electronic production, and the opening song showcases the band’s talent from the very start.

“I like how ‘cutting grass’ has an extended intro, and that’s why we wanted it to start off the album,” Cobb says.

“That song sets the tone in terms of the palette we are using on the record,” Cullen says. “It’s just really vibey – it feels really good,” he adds with a smile.

The back half of FLUX showcases the quieter, more introspective side of the band. On “where we go,” Cullen sings of an ill-fated relationship over a minimalist instrumental of piano, synth pads, and quiet drums.

Hope the earth beneath my feet
Cracks and opens and swallows me
Write our names in film of dust
Hope they all remember us

For reasons beyond our callous words
Wished we’d ended on better terms
Oh baby, you didn’t show me where it hurt
You didn’t show me where it hurt

“Where we go” was the first song Cullen and Cobb wrote for Flux, and the song really came alive when they worked on it with Frank Colucci, who coproduced the album with them. “We made some slight tweaks to some of the sounds, and it suddenly felt more cinematic, more widescreen,” Cobb says.

A signature of TENDER’s sound is the use of vocal samples and loops. The human voice often appears all over a TENDER song in different creative ways. On Flux, with its honest and personal lyrics, the band has continued to evolve how they approach the way the vocals function in their music.

“When we first started the band, the vocal had a bit more anonymity to it,” Cullen says. “We always layered it a lot and made it feel more like another instrument. But for the newer stuff, the main vocal has become more upfront as I’ve improved a bit as a singer and gotten more confident. And some of these lyrics are more personal, so they needed that exposure.”

The closing track on the album, “red lights,” showcases the band’s creative approach to vocal samples. The entire song was built around a sample, in which an electronically manipulated voice repeats “I’ve been feeling so down on everything you do, everything you do, yeah.”

“When you’ve written a lot of music, and you want to find something that takes you in a different direction, I find that flicking through random samples is really good,” Cullen says. “And for ‘red lights,’ we started off using that sample for that purpose, and the more we built the song around it, it felt weird to take it out, and we loved that sample, so it became the main hook.”

Cobb and Cullen prefer not to worry about how they will play a song live when they’re in the studio. But they’re also excited to be embarking on a North American tour this fall in support of the new album, with shows spanning from Los Angeles to Toronto to New York.  Because of the complex, nuanced production choices on a TENDER track, when it comes time to tour, Cobb and Cullen spend a lot of time thinking about how to translate their songs from studio to stage.

“When we play a song live, we don’t strive for it to sound exactly like it does on the record,” Cobb says. “We like to do a good representation of it, but it’s about whatever sounds good in the room.”

“It’s quite a fun process,” Cullen says of reimagining the songs for the stage. “I’m doing it right now for the tour coming up. Playing these songs for people and seeing their reactions — that’s always one of the best parts.”

Even with the new album just released and a tour on the horizon, Cobb and Cullen have been continuing to write new music.

In fact, they are already thinking about their next album.

“We’ve been busy writing the next record, which we’re really excited about,” Cullen says.

“Flux is a nice bridge to where our music is going,” Cobb says of the musical direction of the new songs they’ve been working on. “We’re keeping the momentum going.”

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 © Jack Batchelor

FLUX

an album by TENDER