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Sam Fender has given NME an update on how his forthcoming new album is coming together, saying that he already believes the upcoming new record is “miles better” than his debut ‘Hypersonic Missiles’.
Fender was speaking to NME after he played one of the UK’s first major socially distanced gigs at the Virgin Money Unity Arena in Newcastle last week.
Asked about the current progress of the follow-up to 2019’s ‘Hypersonic Missiles’, Fender told NME that “it’s a much more cohesive piece of work” so far.
“For me, this feels like my first album. [‘Hypersonic Missiles’] was a collection of songs over five years, so it’s not sonically cohesive for me,” he explained. “It has songs like ‘The Borders’ and ‘Two People’ that I love and I’m proud of, but the record itself felt more like a ‘Greatest Hits’ before I’d even had any hits!
“Lyrically, the first one was more looking outwards, and this one’s very much about myself and North Shields and about my friends and family, it’s very much about home. It’s not even about fame; I don’t write about that because I try to stay away from it.”
He added: “I do think the second album is miles better than the first one, though.”
Speaking about his most recent songwriting creations, Fender described his latest songs as “morbid” yet also “introspective, and a bit more Americana-y”.
“With the first record, it’s mirroring a lot of the stuff that I was listening to when I was a teenager – I was just Springsteen-mad back then,” he told NME. “There’s still a bit of Springsteen on the second one, always, but there’s also bits of Joni Mitchell, War on Drugs, Pinegrove and Big Thief. All the American shite!”
Fender will hit the road in 2021 for a tour which will include some of his biggest headline shows to date. The gigs were rescheduled from their original April 2020 date due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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