Fear of falling asleep

Description

Groove of velvet and muffled notes: the new album by the electro-pop duo Tender is finally available!" Staying awake at night, when it's just me and my mind racing, it's like I'm drifting into the darkest parts of myself," says James Cullen of the band Tender. "Until I wrote these songs, I never really knew if anyone else struggled with those same thoughts and fears." In this sense, Tender's striking new album, Fear Of Falling Asleep, is a collection of contradictions. It's a record about isolation that fosters connections, a narrative about anxiety that offers reassurance, a chronicle of desolation that promises hope. Inspired by that particular moment before falling asleep, when silence prevails and doubts, fears, and desires fade away, the album is of unwavering honesty / a courageous reckoning between depression and darkness. All along, with his musical partner Dan Cobb, Cullen captures the breadth of these nocturnal emotions - the guilt that gnaws at us, the paralyzing loneliness, the aimless drift - bringing them to life in the form of an electronic and seductive groove, and dreamy synths.