Julia Cumming Announces Debut Album on Partisan Records
By Julia Cumming
announces debut solo record
Julia
Sunflower Bean frontwoman signs to Partisan Records and reveals details of solo album out 24 April 2026.
new video directed by Edgar Wright out now
‘My Life’
WATCH HERE
An integral part of the NYC music scene since forming acclaimed rock band Sunflower Bean as a teenager, Julia Cumming is set to release her impressive debut album, Julia, on April 24th via Partisan Records, a move that sees her joining a dynamic stable of artists that includes Geese, Cameron Winter, PJ Harvey, IDLES and Blondshell. Lauded over the past several years as one of the most captivating frontwomen in rock – “a genre shapeshifter with her soft yet tough-as-nails voice,” as one music critic once put it – Julia marks a brand new chapter for Cumming, a clear and unadorned declaration of stepping out on her own. Not a rebrand, but a full creative rebirth.
After a transformative three year journey of self-actualization and dream fulfillment, Cumming is ready to unveil the fruits of her labor. Today’s album news comes replete with a gorgeous debut single. ‘My Life’ packs a punch in a warm embrace. Within seconds, she sings her agency into being, fingers meeting the piano keys, striking just the sparest of chords: “I sing these words for me/ To hear the sound/ To let them ring/ To drown you out.” In embarking on her solo journey, this thesis statement of a song was the key that unlocked a creative door that Cumming had been waiting for.
The accompanying video, filmed in London this winter, was directed by celebrated English filmmaker – and renowned music connoisseur – Edgar Wright (The Running Man, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Baby Driver).
Of ‘My Life’ Cumming shares: “This song came after a period of intense pressure, the culmination of writing through the pandemic and the years spent in the rhythm of touring, recording, and trying to find my place within it all…Then something shifted. It was liberation, and I knew immediately it was the beginning of something new. It’s clear ‘My Life’’ would open the album, because it’s the thesis. The seed that started everything.”
The album was completed over a six week period in Los Angeles with her collaborator Brian Robert Jones (Paramore, Vampire Weekend) and producer and engineer Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio, Grizzly Bear, Beach House), and a studio band that included Garrett Ray (Olivia Rodrigo, SIA) on drums, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (Beck) on keys and Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) contributed guitar to two tracks. Through the process Julia learned to lean into her most formative influences, Burt Bacharach, Carol King, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and her “one-and-only-and-always” Brian Wilson.
About the album, Cumming notes, “I think we all try to play into the roles that other people put on us, or that we put on ourselves, in the hopes of being accepted. To use this music as a way out of those external narratives is my dream. One of my main goals with this record was for it to sound fun, not morose. It’s the ultimate anti-cool album. It’s a joyous space for the misfits, and in particular, an album for girls like me, the ones in middle school who never fit into a neat little box. I want this record to be a place where those girls can find solace. You don’t have to be who anyone wants you to be to be enough.”
Julia is a self-assured debut shaped by agency, artistic freedom, and the quiet courage of choosing oneself. Grounded in classic American song writing and emotional clarity, the album traces Cumming’s path toward self-acceptance, moving through memory (‘Please Let Me Remember This’, with its plea to hold on to fleeting joy), love and loss (‘Fucking Closure’, where tenderness and melancholy coexist), and personal liberation on the opening thesis statement ‘My Life’, which rejects outside judgment entirely. Across its songs, Julia finds freedom not through reinvention, but through release and letting go of expectation, perception, and the pressure to be enough for anyone but herself, embracing joy, vulnerability, and autonomy on her own terms.
With the announce of the album, Cumming has shared a run of her first solo performances, including London’s Moth Club in May. Full dates are below, purchase tickets here
1. My Life
2. Revel in the Knowledge
3. Hollywood Communication
4. Please Let Me Remember This
5. Emotional Labor
6. Ruled By Fear
7. Fucking Closure
8. I Dream of a Fire That Stays Burning When Nobody Tends To It
9. Do It All Again
10. Sounds of a Secret
11. Forget The Rest
pre-order album here
Julia Cumming 2026 tour dates
April 28th – New York City – Public Records
April 30th – Los Angeles – Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever
May 12th – London – Moth Club
May 13th – Manchester – YES (Basement)
May 18th – Berlin – Mikropol
May 20th – Paris – L’Archipel
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