Somniphobia

Description

Velvet groove and muffled notes: electro-pop duo Tender's new album is finally here! "Staying up at night, when it's just me and my mind racing, feels like drifting into the darker parts of myself," says James Cullen of Tender. "Until I wrote these songs, I never really knew if anyone else struggled with these same thoughts and fears." In that sense, Tender's striking new album, Fear Of Falling Asleep, is a collection of contradictions. It's a record about isolation that fosters connection, a narrative about anxiety that offers reassurance, a chronicle of desolation that promises hope. Inspired by that particular moment before falling asleep, when silence takes hold and doubts, fears, and desires fade away, the album is unflinchingly honest / a courageous reckoning between depression and darkness. Throughout, with musical partner Dan Cobb, Cullen captures the breadth of these nocturnal emotions – the gnawing guilt, the paralyzing solitude, the aimless drifts – bringing them to life in the form of alluring electronic grooves and dreamy synths.