Oct 18, 2026 · 20 min · 9 segments
Gently Tender’s latest album came out Oct. 16. It’s a deeply reflective body of work that contrasts the tranquility of the countryside surrounding London with the chaos of the city itself. Songwriter…
Sam FryerGuestPodcast HostHostAs you said, you know, this whole record was written almost as an escape from the at times chaotic environment of life in London.
Honestly, kind of like, you know, the long walks that inspired it was creating the album similar to those sort of meditative walks.
Even though my studio at the time where I wrote it in was very kind of dark and dingy and quite sad, I never felt very inspired by my studio.
It was in a warehouse in North London and it was... quite like yeah it's quite a sinister place but um but like singing and making the songs about my adventures outside of the kind of hellscape of uh the industrial estates that i was in definitely made me feel a lot more yeah, inspired, a little bit more warm and a bit more grateful for the land that is around London that I can escape into and burn up my energy because I think it boils down to definitely a lot of neurodivergence and ADHD that I have to That's the reason why the city makes me feel the way it does and I get overstimulated by the city quite easily.
I've got to be... looking after myself meditating going for long walks and uh yeah really really stay on top of it all in order for me to write the best music i could possibly can write and so yeah it's all linked together as part of the same uh self-help really it's all self-help yeah all of my music
yeah Around the time your first record came out, I was just reading this earlier, you said that the band was about figuring out who you are in the midst of chaos, which, to be honest, still seems relevant to what you're creating now.
And so how would you say this record maybe expands upon the ideas of the last one, or how does it differ?
yeah the last record was very much internalized like it was me getting myself out of a hole i'd say a nervous breakdown and so like i said the reason why i know how my mental health really affects my songwriting is because my mental health wasn't great when i went to write my uh the first album for gently tender and it took me a long time to I don't think I wrote a song for about two years before that first album was recorded.
I was building back up to something and I was really trying to figure it out and I was a bit lost.
So that was the chaos and the breakup of my old band and that was the chaos and me trying to work out what to do next.
get myself out of the hole to make something new that was listenable for people but definitely this is now i'm coming out of that shell with this new record um even though i live in chaos i do have a like a nervous system that is constantly in flight or flight but it's just learning how to cope with it and actually thrive with it um and actually use it as a tool for great things and success instead of it being something that i'm constantly fighting against and battling it's something that i'm actually able to use it as a tool um for my creativity my overactive nervous system and yeah it's um definitely a wild inward journey that's becoming a lot more outward and i'm talking a lot more about the my surroundings I'm talking about the city I'm talking about the countryside and how they intertwine as you enter both realms going in and out of the city constantly and how it makes me feel it's just about being present about how your surroundings make you feel that's what I'm meditating on really
As you said, you know, this whole record was written almost as an escape from the at times chaotic environment of life in London.
Honestly, kind of like, you know, the long walks that inspired it was creating the album similar to those sort of meditative walks.
Even though my studio at the time where I wrote it in was very kind of dark and dingy and quite sad, I never felt very inspired by my studio.
It was in a warehouse in North London and it was... quite like yeah it's quite a sinister place but um but like singing and making the songs about my adventures outside of the kind of hellscape of uh the industrial estates that i was in definitely made me feel a lot more yeah, inspired, a little bit more warm and a bit more grateful for the land that is around London that I can escape into and burn up my energy because I think it boils down to definitely a lot of neurodivergence and ADHD that I have to That's the reason why the city makes me feel the way it does and I get overstimulated by the city quite easily.
I've got to be... looking after myself meditating going for long walks and uh yeah really really stay on top of it all in order for me to write the best music i could possibly can write and so yeah it's all linked together as part of the same uh self-help really it's all self-help yeah all of my music
yeah Around the time your first record came out, I was just reading this earlier, you said that the band was about figuring out who you are in the midst of chaos, which, to be honest, still seems relevant to what you're creating now.
And so how would you say this record maybe expands upon the ideas of the last one, or how does it differ?
yeah the last record was very much internalized like it was me getting myself out of a hole i'd say a nervous breakdown and so like i said the reason why i know how my mental health really affects my songwriting is because my mental health wasn't great when i went to write my uh the first album for gently tender and it took me a long time to I don't think I wrote a song for about two years before that first album was recorded.
I was building back up to something and I was really trying to figure it out and I was a bit lost.
So that was the chaos and the breakup of my old band and that was the chaos and me trying to work out what to do next.
get myself out of the hole to make something new that was listenable for people but definitely this is now i'm coming out of that shell with this new record um even though i live in chaos i do have a like a nervous system that is constantly in flight or flight but it's just learning how to cope with it and actually thrive with it um and actually use it as a tool for great things and success instead of it being something that i'm constantly fighting against and battling it's something that i'm actually able to use it as a tool um for my creativity my overactive nervous system and yeah it's um definitely a wild inward journey that's becoming a lot more outward and i'm talking a lot more about the my surroundings I'm talking about the city I'm talking about the countryside and how they intertwine as you enter both realms going in and out of the city constantly and how it makes me feel it's just about being present about how your surroundings make you feel that's what I'm meditating on really
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