Tenderness

Tenderness announces debut album 'True' out March 13th via Amorphous Sounds & Shares new single "We'll Always Have Paris 1919". UK tour announced with Willy Mason.

Tenderness, the solo project of Katy Beth Young (Peggy Sue, Deep Throat Choir), today announces her debut album True -out on March 13th via Amorphous Sounds, and shares the new single, "We'll Always Have Paris 1919."

 Tenderness is also set to tour with Willy Mason this November with shows in York, Liverpool, Bristol, Falmouth, Lyme Regis, Norwich, Newcastle, Glasgow, Manchester and London.

Following the release of her debut EP earlier this year, the new single – a country-adjacent short story inspired by an ex-boyfriend’s engagement photo – combines sweet sentiments and cutting lyrics, with sparse Mitski-esque guitars and dreamy layered harmonies from members of Deep Throat Choir. 

Young says:

"'We’ll Always Have Paris 1919’ is a dedication to my favourite love bomber. It’s part romance and part clear-eyed realism. Most of the songs on the album are born from those first hints of clarity after some kind of heartbreak. But with this song, I had more distance from the big emotions and it became  this perfect, very honest mix of affection and spite and catharsis."

A walk across the salt flats. A pixelated moon on a touchscreen. A song set on the hottest day of the year. A song set on the final day on earth. A song you can’t send to someone, because they’re no longer there. True, the debut album from Tenderness, leads you by the hand through scenes like these, on deceptively simple songs that shimmer with electric guitars and drones and licks of pedal steel.

Songs that look sideways at romance and grief and technology. Songs that break hearts with their precise and thoughtful beauty as well as their sadness. Songs that are, by turns, tender like a touch, tender like a bruise.

Tenderness was born out of a tough storm of circumstances: the pandemic, a cancelled tour, a break-up, and the loss of her father. Furloughed and with too much time on her hands, Young began to write new songs in her north London living room, windows wide open to the hot summer outside.

“I was having a hard old time but it was also strangely beautiful. There’s something about that space of grief that is very tender. There was a lot of sadness, but also a sweetness and openness to the world. You feel things deeply but you’re also gentle with people.”

she says.

In August 2020, during that “weird window” of the pandemic where lockdown eased up enough for a trip to the seaside, or across London, Young visited producer Euan Hinshelwood (Younghusband, Cate Le Bon) at his Greenwich studio. In two days, the pair recorded eight demos with no pressure or plan. 

“It was like a day trip to the land of music” 

Over the next few years, around lockdowns and tours and day jobs, those demos quietly transformed into True.

Across the ten songs, Young tries to untangle the supposed boundaries between fantasy and fact, romance and the real world.

“We perform love in the same way that we perform love songs. And when you sing, performing makes the emotions real again. That’s why ‘True’ became the album title. It’s all true, I think.” 

she says.

Technology is a recurring lens – screens as connector and amplifier as well as barrier. Photos of the moon, video calls, streaming algorithms, and re-read text messages all mirror modern love and grief. Initially, Young considered naming the album Touchscreen for how it evokes both an intimacy and a distancing. 

“I love making a playlist for someone. I think it’s no less beautiful than a mixtape. But if you’re training something to know your romantic buttons, it all gets a bit Her.”

she says.

Lyrically, the video calls and databases sit alongside tidal pools, televisions and sugar levels, keeping the songs squarely in Young’s world, even as every track flickers with the influence of country music. While the influence of classic country artists like Patsy Cline and Kris Kristofferson is felt, so is that of Big Thief, Yo La Tengo, Wye Oak and Bill Callahan. 

“It turns out all of my favourite bands are at least a little bit country,” 

Young laughs.

Producer Hinshelwood helped shape each song’s sonic world. The final recordings are sparse in that country way but layered with Hinshelwood’s textures: synths, drones, rich backing vocals, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy–style guitar solos. A key ingredient came midway through recording: pedal steel by Scottish musician Harry Bohay (Aldous Harding, Sylvie), whom Young saw performing with Erin Rae. 

“He was just going to play on two songs in the beginning, but it lifted the music so perfectly that we ended up having pedal steel on almost every song,” 

she says.      

True is a solo album in name, but a communal one in spirit. Longtime collaborators appear throughout: Peggy Sue’s Clay Slade and Olly Joyce, La Luz’s Marian Li-Pino, and members of Deep Throat Choir. Backing vocals come from Berlin musicians Martha Rose, Dandy Deniz and Benjamin Gregory, and the album's finishing touches - strings and synths -- were added by producer Chloe Kraemer. Young comments 

“One of the most joyful things about doing a solo record has been needing and wanting and being able to invite so many different people to play on it. It feels very beautiful to me that so many of the people I’ve made music with are on the album.”

The result is an album that feels both deeply personal and quietly expansive - a collection of songs born from solitude but shaped by community, rooted in heartache yet reaching toward something hopeful. True doesn’t shout to be heard; instead, it lingers and glows.

Photo by Rachel Lipsitz

Live Dates

5 November – York, The Crescent

6 November – Liverpool, St Michael-in-The-Hamlet Church

7 November – Bristol, Thekla

8 November – Falmouth, The Cornish Bank

9 November – Lyme Regis, Marine Theatre

11 November – Norwich, Norwich Arts Centre

12 November – Newcastle, The Cluny

13 November – Glasgow, Òran Mór

14 November – Manchester, Band On The Wall

15 November – London, Village Underground

w/ Willy Mason