Northern Irish/Dutch two-piece Fräulein have announced details of their debut mini-album, alongside new single 'Feels Like Flying'.
Sink Or Swim will be released on June 14 via Submarine Cat Records. The incoming mini-LP finds Fräulein as connected as ever with their primal origins, while also displaying new levels of sophistication. The blunt impact of their bone-simple riffage remains intact, but these new songs showcase the duo’s limitless potential, their feel for tension and release, the complex undertows within Joni Samuels’ lyrics.
‘Feels Like Flying’ offers up a ‘day’ and ‘night’ version of the song. ‘Feels Like Flying’’s ‘day’ version is a brooding, guitar and drum heavy offering, featuring Joni’s unmistakably aching and powerful vocal delivery, with the ‘night’ edition – the original – offering a much gentler, melancholy take.
Listen to ‘Feels Like Flying (Day)’ by Fräuelin on the F1 Tracks Playlist on Spotify.
“I reject the belief that an artist should arrive fully-formed,” says Joni. “I love when you can see artists’ growth, their progression. I want to always be getting better at playing music, at expressing emotion. This new record, Sink Or Swim, is the first time we’ve really translated what we can do live to the recording studio.”
Fräulein’s growth and progression is at full-pelt now, their shows simmering, sweat-drenched experiences, their records finally capturing that onstage alchemy, their rehearsal sessions throwing up killer new tunes and refining older ideas that hadn’t quite clicked yet. There’s a confidence and vivacity to this group that’s untrammelled and infectious, a bond that’s only more intense and unbreakable because it’s just the two of them.
The new mini-album Sink Or Swim allows that confidence full voice, switching between the brooding build of new double single ‘Feels Like Flying’, to the rhythmically complex cyclone of 2024’s opener ‘Wait And See’ and the seasick thrashing of ‘The Last Drop’. The band have already gathered enviable support from recent releases from the likes of DIY Mag, The Line Of Best Fit, Clash, So Young, The Independent, Loud & Quiet and Radio 1 & 6 Music, who all shone a light on the fast-rising band.
It’s not just the songwriting that’s grown in leaps and bounds; working in collaboration on the album’s production with US-born, London-based outfit Cosmorat, Samuels and Karsten van der Tol have captured their turbulent sound in sharp fidelity, delivering both the most accurate snapshot of their live power and prowess, and also opening infinite doors to further possibilities and experimentation.
This is big music. This is important. This is a band finding their moment. More new music will be shared in due course alongside live dates for the Spring and beyond.
