TENDER releases single “Eleanor” from new LP

Since forming back in 2015, TENDER have been making an impact with a sound that takes shape where intimate songwriting and expansive electronic production meet. The duo, made up of James Cullen and Dan Cobb, have earned a reputation for creating music that feels profoundly personal while connecting on a much larger scale with countless listeners around the world. Across their albums including Modern Addiction, Fear of Falling Asleep and Flux, they’ve developed a unique sound that balances emotion with catchy songwriting, earning widespread support and clocking hundreds of millions of spins along the way.

Now, more than a decade into their journey, TENDER return with a new sense of confidence on their fourth studio album, Where The Waves Break. Released via Nettwerk, the fourteen-track outing represents what may be the duo’s most focused and ambitious work thus far. Penned and self-produced by James and Dan from their respective homes on England’s south coast, the album arose during a period of greater personal stability, allowing the pair to tackle songwriting from a different emotional perspective.

Thematically, the album revolves around the idea of an imaginary line that everyone walks throughout life; on one side exists light, calm, beauty and optimism. On the other lies darkness, chaos and uncertainty. The songs move back and forth across that divide, reflecting the reality that neither side can exist without the other. While that record was shaped by the instability and constant change of pandemic-era life, Where The Waves Break arrives from a place of reflection. Themes of ageing and new fatherhood inform much of the writing, introducing a context that feels equally patient and deeply candid.

Parenthood, in particular, lands as a key influence throughout the album and the experience brings a constant fluctuation of emotion, where moments of immense fulfilment can sit directly beside self-doubt and worry. Questions about responsibility, choice and identity quietly simmer throughout, amplifying the album’s fascination with emotional extremes and the spaces between them. The latest single titled “Eleanor” captures these themes in a stunning indie pop jam brimming with infectious hooks, grooving rhythm and poignant lyricism.

Positioned as the focus track from the album, it reflects the balancing act that defines the wider record, focusing on a mysterious figure who inspires both affection and frustration in equal measure. As TENDER describe it, Eleanor is someone impossible to live with and impossible to live without, an idea that becomes a metaphor for many of the contradictions explored throughout the album, where opposing feelings exist simultaneously. Kicked off by the soft swirl of woozy synth textures, the strike of drums injects a laid back groove of pulsing bass lines before hushed vocals take over to cast an intimate soundscape.

Building with airy vocal leads and intricate guitar flickers, the track swells into an instantly memorable chorus cut with singalong energy and mellow rhythmic momentum. It’s a superb showcase of TENDER’s songwriting flair and performance panache, delivering a magical musical moment that’s truly impossible not to love. With Where The Waves Break, TENDER have created a record that feels at once profoundly personal and widely relatable, painting a thoughtful portrait of what it means to exist somewhere between certainty and doubt, light and shadow, calm and disarray.

Listen to Eleanor below

More from Music

---

Editor Picks

---