South East London’s resident art-rock misfits Black Bordello are back with their new single, ‘Daddy’. It’s the first glimpse of their third record ‘Midheaven Tempest,’ slated for September 2026.

Vaudeville drama, post-punk pulse, flashes of jazz and chamber pop stitched together with a gothic thread. On ‘Daddy,’ that instinct tightens into something more focused and bruised. There’s progressive ambition in the structure, art-pop gloss in the melodies, but it never sits still long enough to feel comfortable.

Frontwoman Sienna Bordello calls it the hardest song she’s written. It circles the death of her father, but avoids straight confession. Instead, it leans on theatre and surrealism, turning grief into shifting scenes and strange symbols. The personal bleeds into the archetypal. Father as man, father as myth, father as looming cultural shadow. Her soprano cuts through it all, elastic and unafraid of melodrama, which in this band’s hands feels earned.

The forthcoming album was produced by Balazs Altsach, known for work at Church Studios alongside Paul Epworth, and it reportedly pushes the band further into trip-hop murk and industrial abrasion. That tension is already audible here.