*Falling Backwards* is the debut album by the duo Him & Earl, released by the label Wah Wah 45s. It offers a mystical blend of desert blues, English folk, Americana and poignant Southern soul, while venturing into psychedelic and progressive rock across eleven tracks with a warm, hazy atmosphere. Singer-songwriter Olly Him and DJ, producer and composer Wyndham Earl are both deeply rooted in England’s south coast; the former made a name for himself solo before exploring his progressive-tinged folk-soul sound within various live line-ups, while the latter has collaborated and shared the stage with artists such as Bonobo, Khruangbin, Alice Russell and TM Juke, has seen his remixes released by Tru Thoughts and Mr Bongo Records, and has put out his own projects on his own label, Time Spun. The duo met in 2015, when Wyndham was producing tracks for *Creatures Of The Deep*, a now-defunct hypnotic afro-folk group of which Olly was one of the founding members. They clicked immediately, but after the band split, it took a few years for chance to bring them together again; a chance meeting at a concert led them to consider creating a full album under the name Him & Earl, with Olly writing the songs and Wyndham handling the arrangements and production. After drifting for a long time in a kind of creative ether, the unifying force of these songs proved strikingly immediate. Him & Earl’s very first concert, in early 2026 - when no track had yet been released - far exceeded Olly and Wyndham’s expectations: their quintet found itself facing a packed, electrified room. On that cold January evening, the audience - a crowd of jubilant music lovers - danced to the rhythm of percussion duels, let themselves be carried away by psychedelic guitar and bass flourishes, and sang along to choruses they had never heard a single note of before. Since then, the first two singles, “Bottled Up” and “Away,” have enjoyed prime radio play, notably thanks to Huw Stephens and Cerys Matthews (BBC 6 Music) as well as John Kennedy (Radio X), adding to the widespread support from tastemakers and specialists around the world as anticipation for the album grows. The album’s introspective and philosophical lyrics come to life through a sonic palette that is both rich and strangely exhilarating, subtly transforming into a psychedelic, bluesy journey, dark yet propulsive. The opening track, “Away,” directly addresses a central theme of the record - travel, both physical and mental, as well as the quest to move forward and embrace the unknown; its sunlit guitars, trumpet and violin only hint at the tumultuous sonic adventure about to unfold. The title track, “Falling Backwards,” offers a more revealing clue: its elegant intertwining of staccato fingerpicked motifs, fluid piano melodies and strings unfolds into a six-minute exploration. On it, Olly describes the experience of “living an everyday normality while feeling on the edge of chaos, with the sense that everything could fall apart at any moment: a myriad of elements hold the whole thing together, but if just one fails, everything can fly apart around it.”