South London’s Gently Tender have finally broken their silence. After a three-year stretch without new material, the six-piece — which counts former Palma Violets members Sam Fryer, Pete Mayhew, and Will Doyle among its ranks — have unveiled their new EP, This Was Once Fields, out now via TODO Records.

Stream the EP here: https://open.spotify.com/search/Gently%20Tender%20This%20Was%20Once%20Fields

If their 2022 Matthew E. White-produced debut Take Hold Of Your Promise! was an anthemic, soul-soaked love letter to Americana, This Was Once Fields is its windswept English cousin — a record that trades highway dust for hedgerows and headlights for the slow blue creep of British dusk. Across five tracks, the band picks at the tangled thread between country and city, asking what it means to belong to a place you’ve simultaneously loved and outgrown.

The EP was born on foot. Frontman Sam Fryer spent long stretches walking out from the studio to North London’s green belt, often pacing until the last of the light bled out of the sky. “The view of London from afar at nighttime was what really ignited a spark in me,” Fryer says. “I would reflect on my life and myself as I exist inside the city I’ve lived in for my entire life, that I’ve loved and fallen out of love with over again. The city does weigh on me heavily, but it’s not easy to leave a place you’ve loved forever.”

You can hear those walks in the music. Singles “A Mound A Field” and “Wild in the Uplands” are unvarnished odes to the great outdoors, built on lush group harmonies and pastoral melodies that brush up against folk, punk, and soul without ever fully committing to any single one. Multi-instrumentalist Francesca Brierley (who also records as heka) and Evie Hilyer-Ziegler — bringing violin and flute flourishes courtesy of her time in folk collective Broadside Hacks — round out the lineup alongside guitarist Adam Brown, turning Gently Tender into something closer to a small choir than a rock band.

The tracklist for This Was Once Fields runs: “A Mound A Field,” “Wild in the Uplands,” “Go Get It!,” “10000 Steps from the Door,” and “The City of the Beast.”

Catch Them Live

Gently Tender play a hometown headline show at London’s ICA on Wednesday, May 27 — final tickets are on sale now — before heading to County Waterford for All Together Now Festival on August 1. Then comes the big one: an 11-date headline tour of the UK and Ireland this November, wrapping at Bristol’s beloved The Louisiana.

Gently Tender Live 2026:
May 27 — London, UK — Institute of Contemporary Arts
August 1 — County Waterford, IE — All Together Now Festival
November 2 — Nottingham, UK — Bodega
November 3 — Norwich, UK — Norwich Arts Centre
November 4 — Sheffield, UK — Sidney & Matilda
November 5 — Birmingham, UK — Hare & Hounds
November 6 — Dublin, IE — Whelan’s (Upstairs)
November 8 — Glasgow, UK — The Rum Shack
November 9 — Newcastle, UK — The Cluny 2
November 11 — Leeds, UK — Brudenell Social Club
November 12 — Manchester, UK — YES (Pink Room)
November 13 — Winchester, UK — The Railway Inn
November 14 — Bristol, UK — The Louisiana

Tickets are on sale now via gentlytender.co.uk/tickets. Dig in, lace up your walking boots, and let This Was Once Fields take you somewhere a little quieter than the city.