Pet Fox announce their second album Balance, their first record in four years

Pet Fox have announced Balance, their second album and their first release in four years, and shared its title track. The Boston trio follow 2022's A Face In Your Life with a record that changes how they work rather than what they sound like.

The band are singer Theo Hartlett, who also plays drums in Ovlov and has served as touring guitarist for Gouge Away, bassist Morgan Luzzi and drummer Jesse Weiss. That overlap with other bands explains some of the four-year gap.

Balance is their first fully studio-produced album after years of largely producing themselves. They cut it over seven days at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville with Alex Farrar, whose recent work includes Wednesday, MJ Lenderman and Squirrel Flower, and recorded most of it live in the room.

The songs came together well before the sessions. They were written and demoed between autumn 2023 and spring 2024 in the band's Boston rehearsal space, with Pinback, Autolux and Alex G named as reference points, which is a fair description of where the record's angular guitar writing sits.

Hartlett explained the title track as being about impulsivity driven by anxiety or frustration. Thinking things through before acting matters, he said, and the fight between impulsivity and indecision is something he has struggled with all his life. The album title extends that to a broader question about caring for yourself without losing sight of the people around you, and about overcoming the pull of people-pleasing.

Balance runs nine tracks, opening on the title song and continuing through Moving Along, Avoidant, Holding On, My Only Virtue, Leveled Out, Redo Everything, I'll Wait and For Sale. Exploding In Sound Records releases it on 23 October, and the record sits among the autumn's indie releases on the release calendar.