Introducing: Chartreuse

Black Country four-piece Chartreuse return today with news of their deeply personal and expansive second album Bless You & Be Well, due for release on Friday 29th August via Communion Records. The announcement lands alongside new single ‘Fold’, a tender and searching love song, which premiered today on BBC 6Music with Lauren Laverne.

Recorded in a remote northern Icelandic studio with Sam Petts-Davies (The Smile), the new album marks a striking evolution for the band — embracing instinct over perfection, and finding light amid personal storms. Chartreuse also confirm a run of UK headline tour dates this autumn, following praised performances at Hoxton Hall and The Great Escape, where Rolling Stone UK hailed them as “a transformative highlight” of the festival.

You’ve spoken about Flóki as a kind of refuge — emotionally, creatively, even physically. What did the isolation of northern Iceland unlock in you as a band?

It gave us space to just be a band. Life was hectic at the time, and stepping away from distractions helped us focus entirely on the album. We’ve never had the chance to properly lock ourselves away before — it was a completely different, welcome process.

There’s a clear shift in your process on this record — letting go of perfection, embracing spontaneity. How did working with Sam Petts-Davies influence that?

 Sam’s amazing at what he does — fast, instinctive, and always pushing us out of our comfort zones. If we were overthinking something, he'd move us on so we could return with fresh ears. We’ve always had a tendency to fixate, but this time we let things flow more freely.

The album touches on grief, recovery, and emotional weight, but still feels cathartic — even uplifting. How did you strike that balance?

 When we started writing in January 2024, we said we wanted something more hopeful. Then all these life events happened mid-process — but somehow, the lightness stayed. Some of our favourite songs sound 'happy' but deal with heavy themes, and we wanted to lean into that contrast.

You’ve described yourselves as an “anti-band,” always trying to twist familiar sounds. But this album embraces band-ness more directly. How do you reconcile those two instincts?

Working with Sam helped us realise that simple ideas can be powerful. If we liked something, we didn’t overthink it. There’s still that instinct to flip things on their head, but connection comes first — and sometimes too much complexity gets in the way of that.

Songs like Sequence of Voices and More hit that sweet spot between fragility and intensity. Listening back now, what moment lands hardest for you?

 Fixin’ probably hits the hardest. It’s the shortest track, but there's so much space in it — the lyrics really breathe. It holds a lot of weight for us, despite how minimal it is.