Gently Tender
The city does weigh on me heavily — but it’s not easy to leave a place you’ve loved forever.
Gently Tender — the South London six-piece built around former Palma Violets members Sam Fryer, Pete Mayhew, and Will Doyle — return with their first new music since 2023. This Was Once Fields, a five-track EP on TODO Records, arrives May 22. It is a record born from long walks in the North London greenbelt, from the particular feeling of watching a city you’ve always lived in from a distance, and from a band that came very close to not making it this far at all.
Between the 2022 debut and this EP, Gently Tender navigated births, serious illness including a member’s year spent in ICU, departures, and relocations across the country. That the band still exists — and that the music it has produced sounds this open and this alive — is itself the story.
“The view of London from afar at nighttime was what really ignited a spark in me. 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.”
— Sam Fryer, Gently TenderOut of the Ashes, Into the Fields
Gently Tender formed from the wreckage of Palma Violets — the South London group that briefly became one of Britain’s most hyped guitar bands before disbanding in 2017. Fryer, Mayhew, and Doyle came through that and built something quieter and more considered: a debut album, Take Hold Of Your Promise!, produced by Matthew E. White in 2022, that sat somewhere between soulful anthemic Americana and British indie at its most warm-hearted.
The band that made that record no longer exists in its original form. Births, illness, a member’s year in intensive care, departures, relocations — the four years between debut and EP rewrote the lineup and, in doing so, seems to have clarified what the band actually is. Francesca Brierley (multi-instrumentalist/vocalist, also recording as heka) and Evie Hilyer-Ziegler (violin, flute, previously alongside Fryer in folk group Broadside Hacks) complete the current six-piece alongside Fryer, Mayhew, Doyle, and guitarist Adam Brown.
“These walks have provided me with a universe of material that I can dive back into when I need to escape, and that’s where this music was born.”
— Sam Fryer on the EP’s originsThis Was Once Fields — The Record
This Was Once Fields was put together with engineer and producer Matt Wiggins across studios in London. Sonically it turns away from the city and toward the greenbelt that surrounds it — the rolling hills and rugged moors that Fryer began walking compulsively during the years of upheaval, sometimes until the last light disappeared. The record carries that energy: lush harmonies, pastoral melodies, and an indie rock frame that makes room for folk, punk, and soul without forcing any of it.
Lead single “A Mound A Field” captures the specific moment on a walk when the open fields suddenly give way to a view of the vast city — the shift in breathing, the shift in mood. “Wild in the Uplands” takes the other direction: a love letter to trespassing, to not respecting fences, to roaming free in wild places. The EP’s five tracks collectively map that tension between the city Fryer can’t leave and the countryside he keeps walking toward.
- 1A Mound A Field
- 2Wild in the Uplands
- 3Go Get It!
- 410000 Steps from the Door
- 5The City of the Beast
A band that survived four years of collective crisis — births, ICU, departure, dispersal — and came back with a record about the tension between the city that weighs on you and the countryside that sets you free. The stakes are in the grooves whether you know the backstory or not.
— Exposed VocalsOn Stage and What Comes Next
Gently Tender headline the ICA in London on May 27, with appearances at The Great Escape in Brighton and All Together Now Festival in Waterford, Ireland in August. A full UK and Ireland headline tour has since been announced for November 2026, kicking off in Nottingham and running through Birmingham, Dublin, Glasgow, Leeds, and Winchester before closing in Bristol. For a band that came close to dissolving entirely, the booking sheet looks like proof of something.
For EV’s readership on this side of the Atlantic, Gently Tender represent exactly the kind of overlooked British indie that rewards early attention — the lineage runs from Palma Violets through the pastoral strand of UK guitar music that rarely makes the algorithmic noise it deserves. This Was Once Fields is the right place to start.
This Was Once Fields is out May 22 on TODO Records. Stream it, then follow the band ahead of the November tour.
