Sylvan Esso share intimate, slow-burning new single 'Free' | NME

Sylvan Esso have shared new single ‘Free’, the final preview of the electronic pop duo’s forthcoming album ‘Free Love’ ahead of its release this Friday (September 25).

The sparse, slow-burning ‘Free’ arrives alongside a D.L. Anderson-directed video that captures the band’s Amelia Meath singing the track in front of gently pulsating lights. Watch that below:

“Free was written all in one go. One of those magical moments of songwriting that happens once every hundred songs,” commented Meath in a statement.

“Nick [Sanborn, bandmate] knew it was the centrepiece of the record the minute I showed it to him. ‘We should call the record Free Love.’ It’s the centre of the record – a song about being obscured by someone’s loving impression. A mirror on a mirr or.”

The duo have shared three other singles – ‘Frequency’, ‘Ferris Wheel’ and ‘Rooftop Dancing’ – in the lead-up to releasing ‘Free Love’. The album will follow 2017’s ‘What Now’.

Upon the announcement of ‘Free Love’, Meath called it “a record about being increasingly terrified of the world around you and looking inward to remember all the times when loving other people seemed so easy, so that you can find your way back to that place.”

Sylvan Esso will celebrate the release of ‘Free Love’ on Friday with a virtual event called Opening Night, which the band are billing as “part gallery opening, part late-night telethon, part record release party”.

The digital event will feature the band performing tracks from ‘Free Love’ live, DJ sets from Sanborn and Merrill Garbus (aka Tune-Yards), a discussion with ‘Rooftop Dancing’ video director Cheryl Dunn and more. Opening Night begins at 1AM BST on September 25.