London-based artist & multi-instrumentalist Alfie Templeman is back with his towering new single “Hello Lonely” today. The new track marks the third and latest preview of his hotly anticipated sophomore album, Radiosoul set to arrive on June 7th, 2024 via Chess Club Records / AWAL. Swirling disco and acid pop into a track that bursts with glossy falsettos and fuzzed-out guitars, “Hello Lonely” encases a deceptive introspection: the 21-year-old artist’s reflections on the chasm between work life & personal life, and the need to check in on your own sanity during those quiet moments when you retreat home.
“To me, this song captures those existential thoughts everyone seemed to have during the pandemic (and even post-pandemic) where everyone kinda said ‘So what now?’,” says Alfie about the track. “I’ve always had a bit of a dodgy social battery and sometimes struggle with social media and touring as it can require a lot of energy to get on stage 100 times a year and maintain conversation with so many different people. When you have such a different work life compared to home life, silence becomes pretty deafening and very intense. ‘Hello Lonely’ is about coping with those big quiet moments and checking in on your own sanity.”
A self-taught musical polymath who’s conquered nearly a dozen instruments himself, Templeman teamed up with a cast of heavy hitters to craft the Radiosoul, which features collaborations with guitar-maestro Nile Rodgers (Chic) and sought-after producers Dan Carey (Wet Leg, Fontaines D.C.), Oscar Scheller (Arlo Parks, Charli XCX), Charlie J Perry (Jorja Smith, BTS), Karma Kid, Will Bloomfield, Justin Young and Josh Scarbrow. Recorded over 5 months predominantly in South London, the project melts with red-hot guitar riffs, unabashedly maximalist production, and psych-pop elements as vibrant as tie-dye. Classic Pop has already awarded the record 4.5 / 5 stars, calling it “a stratospheric leap above his peers for album two.”
While it could be at home sonically in both the past and the future, Radiosoul is a coming-of-age album for the present day; one that sees Alfie catapulting out of his comfort zone. Sonically, as he experiments with funk & disco and brings collaborators into his world for the first time — and literally, as he leaves the small farm town he’s lived in his entire life and navigates the experience of young adulthood in London. It’s an album of self-discovery; one that zips between genres at whim and channels a newfound incisiveness and acerbic humor to Templeman’s lyricism, while retaining the sense of joy that defined his previous releases.
Leading up to today’s release of “Hello Lonely,” the record has been teased over the past few months by way of Alfie’s recent singles “Eyes Wide Shut” and the title track “Radiosoul.” Marking his first new pieces of original solo music since his acclaimed 2022 debut LP Mellow Moon, the songs garnered acclaim around the world; from BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record In The World, to dozens of Spotify New Music Friday and Apple New Music Daily playlists and attention from the likes of Rolling Stone, FLOOD Magazine, Consequence, Northern Transmissions, NME, Clash, The Line of Best Fit, Ones To Watch, Euphoria Magazine and more.