Chloe Slater tells us about her debut album ‘Riot Youth’ and “encapsulating that feeling where it feels like anything could change”

The former star of NME’s The Cover has also shared her latest single ‘Southern Youth’ and announced a new UK headline tour, including her biggest show to date

Chloe Slater has announced her debut album ‘Riot Youth’ with new single ‘Southern Youth’ and news of a UK tour. Check it out below as the rising indie star tells NME about the political messages on the record and backing up her music with tangible action.

The Bournemouth-born, Manchester-raised musician is set to release her first full-length album on October 9 via Stolen Juice (AWAL). It follows a string of singles, last year’s ‘Love Me Please’ EP, and her 2024 debut EP ‘You Can’t Put A Price On Fun’.

Produced by long-term collaborator Jack Shuter, alongside Ash Workman ( Metronomy , Stealing Sheep ), ‘Riot Youth’ continues Slater’s politically charged writing, tackling topics ranging from the climate crisis to late-stage capitalism and the billionaire class. Its title, she explained to NME , refers to “a spirit or feeling found not exclusively, but most often, in young minds and young hearts due to the absence of learned helplessness. Symptoms include a lack of apathy and an abundance of passion and belief that things can and will change”.

“I really think young people who have only lived through a couple of election cycles and haven’t been bogged down or disappointed by a major loss in the past are more likely to have that fire and that passion to keep fighting for what they want to see,” Slater said of the community the album title refers to.

“Whereas if you’ve been through 10 election cycles and every time the government gets worse and becomes more right-wing and more fascist, then you’re eventually going to think, ‘What’s the point? Nothing ever changes.’

She continued: “There’s just a certain lovely aspect to being young and not being knocked down in the way the world can knock people down that means you’re more likely to go out and fight for change. I wanted this album to encapsulate that feeling of when you’re younger, and it feels like anything could change.”

While ‘Riot Youth’ dissects societal and political issues and touches on our fear of the future (and tendency to escape into nostalgia as a response), the 23-year-old sees some reasons to stay hopeful in her generation. “While there are some negatives to the extreme nostalgia epidemic that we’re in at the moment, I think some nice parts of it are that people are switching off of their screens and trying to live more in the moment, and we’re becoming more aware of what our phones and technology are doing to us,” she shared.