10 years since the release of their hit single ‘Atlantis’, Yorkshire duo Seafret - aka best friends and musical co-conspirators Jack Sedman and Harry Draper - are heading into 2025 as a band reborn. Having watched the epic emotional catharsis of that single gain a whole new lease of life over the past three years, re-entering the cultural conversation via a viral TikTok moment that then snowballed into more than a billion streams, the band have never had more eyes on them, and more fans awaiting their next moves.
A decade into their career, it’s a situation that neither musician could have predicted. “You can’t compute those numbers,” says Draper. “We’re incredibly proud, but you can’t get your head round it. A million, maybe, but not a billion…” Yet while the stats themselves might be too fantastical for either of these two eternally grounded Northerners to fully reconcile, the fire it’s lit in them is far more tangible. And, with new album ‘Fear of Emotion’ marking their most bold and confident work yet, it’s a renewed sense of belief and excitement in what Seafret can be that’s fuelling everything the duo are doing right now. “There’s been a new buzz since everything with ‘Atlantis’,” Draper continues. “It feels like we’re a new band again.”
Where Seafret’s last album, 2023’s glass-half-full ‘Wonderland’, was born from Covid-based separation and an uncharacteristically isolated way of working, everything about ‘Fear of Emotion’ has been rooted in camaraderie and the joy of creative relationships. Written and recorded over the course of 2024, the album came together steadily and purposefully, with the success of ‘Atlantis’ affording them the time to explore every possible avenue of their songwriting before settling on a tracklist. Seafret’s fourth also sees them bring producer Steve Robson and engineer Sam Miller back into the fold - aka the familiar faces behind the desk of 2016 debut LP ‘Tell Me It’s Real’. Recorded at Robson’s studio in London, the sessions became a tangible marker of exactly how far they’d come.
“It all felt very new and like a step forward for our songs, but going back into those rooms was like we’d never left,” smiles Sedman. “It’s like we were the people they were hoping we’d grow into back then. Being in the studio with them felt like we were back home.”
There’s a full circle-ness that writes itself over ‘Fear of Emotion’: an album created with the vitality of a new band but the experience of seasoned pros. It’s there in the way that Seafret test their own boundaries, bringing in heavier, stormier production on opener ‘River of Tears’ and country-flecked banjos on ‘Signal Fire’, but it’s also in the way that the pair clearly know themselves and their band more strongly than ever. “When we first met, we boxed ourselves in as an acoustic band, but then we started using production and opening it up and, since then, it’s felt like we could take it any way that we want,” says Sedman. “We were completely different people back then - if you go right back to when we met at the open mic night, we were shells of who we are now!” Draper laughs.
That formative open mic night back in Bridlington - when Sedman and Draper first met and the seeds of Seafret were first born - does, however, have a special significance on their latest. That night, Sedman opened his set with a cover of James Morrison’s ‘Please Don’t Stop The Rain’; now, all these years on, the band have collaborated with Morrison on “end of the world song”, ‘Driftwood’. “I was freaking out when we got the call that we were writing with him,” chuckles Sedman. “But it felt like it was time for something like this. We’ve been around the block and we’ve survived. We can decide what we want to do because we’ve been through it all. So I wasn’t scared, I just wanted to get a mint song, and the song is beautiful.”
‘Driftwood’ is, indeed, beautiful: a duet in which both vocalists shine, detailing the sort of important relationship that can feel like a life raft in dark times. One of three collaborative tracks on their latest, it’s yet further proof of the open-hearted spirit of the album sessions, but also the pull of Seafret in 2025. KT Tunstall, a long term fan of the band, joins them for ‘Five More Seconds’ as she and Sedman sing of a relationship in turmoil and the ways in which you strive to save it. “Of course, we both had a lot of experience in those situations of frosty atmospheres - ‘Is it alright if I go on tour for six weeks…?’” Sedman notes, wryly. Elsewhere, rising star and Ivor Novello nominee Katie Gregson-Macleod brings a new angle to the acoustic-plucked, romantic bubble of ‘Nobody Sees Us’.
Three very different artists that span generations and genres, ‘Fear of Emotion’’s guests are indicative of the album’s breadth. Lyrically observational, as Sedman casts his eye over the struggles and successes populating the lives of those around him, musically the album creates cathartic, emotionally-rich spaces for these stories to thrive. ‘River of Tears’ was a turning point - a more outwardly heavy way of expressing “the heartbreak of being in a relationship that you always knew was doomed”, but the album’s softer moments are equally evocative. ‘Wait’ is a rousing anthem that acknowledges the difficulties of being away from home but yearns for reunion, while ‘Desert Heat’ is a “pure Seafret” song; a simple ode to love that wears its heart proudly on its sleeve.
‘Fear of Emotion’ might be trying to seek solace from the difficulties of life’s troubled times but, in doing so, Seafret have made a record with an emotional core that’s on display for all to see. Sailing proudly into the new horizons of their second wind as a band, it’s Seafret as you’ve always known them but reinvigorated, replenished, and brighter. “These last years have just made us more hungry for it again,” says Sedman. “We’ve put so much work into this new record - we’ve put the time in and we’ve not cut a single corner. It really feels like it’s a fresh new Seafret and we’re ready to go.”
