After decades of writing toward one destination, Foy Vance found himself somewhere entirely new. Following the completion of 2026’s The Wake—the seventh and final installment in a cycle of albums he’d begun in the aftermath of his father’s sudden death in 1999—the Northern Ireland-born singer/songwriter felt called to revisit a vast archive of material he’d written over the course of 27 years but never shared with the world. As he sorted through over a hundred songs he’d kept closely guarded for so long, Vance examined how the passage of time had altered or deepened their meaning, revealing new truths in their collective exploration of devotion, grief, longing, and forgiveness. A rare dialogue across time and experience, his eighth album IF gathers a selection of those newly reimagined songs and presents an intimate meditation on transformation and possibility: the lasting imprints of what we endure, the infinite ways in which love changes us, and the seemingly small choices that end up shaping a life.

Produced by Anderson East (Lukas Nelson, The Lone Bellow), IF ushers in a new chapter in a body of work including landmark albums like his 2013 international breakthrough Joy of Nothing (featuring guest spots from Bonnie Raitt and Ed Sheeran) and 2016’s The Wild Swan (executive-produced by Elton John). Amid a surge of inspiration after finishing The Wake, Vance assembled 119 of the songs he’d unearthed and sent them off to East, a friend and collaborator since the making of his 2007 debut Hope. “There’s always an explosion of creativity after finishing a record, but never quite like what I felt after The Wake,” says Vance, whose output during that period also included a multitude of paintings and several film scripts. “I gave Anderson some new things I’d written along with all these older songs and told him, ‘Have at it—if you pick it, I’ll sing it.’”

Recorded at East’s Nashville studio with drummer Chris Powell (Brandi Carlile, Joy Oladokun), bassist Greg Garner (Marcus King, Sam Barber), and keyboardist Philip Towns (Stevie Nicks, The War and Treaty), IF ultimately encompasses 16 songs rooted in Vance’s potent melding of folk and soul. While his richly expressive voice serves as the album’s guiding force, its elegantly constructed yet mercurial sound fully echoes the fluidity of its creation. “Even though I’d known these songs for years, I had no idea how the musicians would approach or interpret them,” he says. “We changed keys, tempos, time signatures—so much was adapted, everything felt fresh. That’s the alchemy of the whole thing: you show up and get to work and hopefully discover something new together.”

For all the open-endedness of the album-making process, Vance knew its title from the very start. Not only the name of a Rudyard Kipling poem revered by his father, “if” took on a much greater weight in the making of The Wake, when an eleventh-hour omission of the word from a particularly loaded lyric unlocked the song’s true essence. “It just felt so culminative and perfect for ‘if’ to be the last word removed from The Wake, after hearing my dad recite that poem to me so many times,” says Vance. “From a young age I was told that if you want to live your life right and decent, If will show you how.” Unfolding in three acts—IF: WE, IF: YOU, and IF: I—the album gradually narrows its focus from our place in the wider world to the complexities of love to the inner workings of the self. “It’s tied to everything I was gleaning from writing these songs over the last 27 years, and in a way it’s like the arc of life itself,” says Vance. “You’re born into the ‘we’ of a family, then you find your ‘you’—the person you move through life with. And eventually, if you’re lucky or wise enough, you realize everything begins and ends with ‘I.’”

The oldest song on IF, “Feel The Cold” offers an early glimpse at Vance’s profound gift for holding melancholy and joy in delicate balance, rendering each emotion with both unsparing candor and deep sensitivity. Written during a year spent living on the Spanish island of Lanzarote in his 20s, the song spins a luminous portrait of summertime idyll (diving off piers, driving barefoot, howling along to Joni Mitchell songs), then pierces that reverie with a confession of homesick longing. “I went to Lanzarote to get away from everything, and to find something to write about,” he recalls. “Pretty soon I fell into a way of life where I was playing in bars at night and surfing a lot—it was easy and good, but it was never going to be great. I missed December mornings and rain, and I felt the call to go back home and face the cold, face the music, get going with something new.”

In many ways an autobiography in album form, IF contains a number of songs that document pivotal moments in Vance’s life story, such as “Don’t Move”—a piece penned for a shelved album recorded during a creatively untethered period in the early 2000s. Equal parts mythic allegory and hauntingly tender outpouring, “Don’t Move” captures the devastation of losing your way and being forced to rebuild from nothing. “I’d made that first album with intentions that weren’t altruistic, and that’s why everything fell apart,” says Vance. “But it was okay, because I realized that instead of chasing something I didn’t believe in, I just needed to write the songs I wanted to write—and whoever liked them would be my audience. I think that song was sort of telling me, ‘Don’t move, don’t give up, don’t lose your hope.’” Later, on the brightly soulful “Prove Them Wrong,” Vance turns his gaze outward and delivers a lived-in reflection on choosing presence over endless striving. “That song’s a letter to my daughter, reminding her that she doesn’t need to be all things to all people,” he says. “It’s important to remember that we’re all on this spinning planet hurtling through space; we’re all just human beings and we’re here to live.”

Although Vance serves as the sole writer on most of IF, songs like “Stranger” emerged from the unpredictable energy of collaboration. Sprung from an all-night session with Ben Drew (aka Plan B, an English rapper/singer/songwriter/filmmaker), the gloriously raw track inhabits a bluesy ferocity in its lament of a relationship undone by self-alienation. “I remember leaving the studio at four a.m. with my hands covered in blisters from playing drums, sweaty and run ragged but completely exhilarated by what we’d done,” says Vance. On “Save You,” co-written with songwriter/producer Gabe Simon (Noah Kahan, Koe Wetzel), he shares a spontaneously composed but nuanced contemplation of the unforgiving disconnect between what we mean and what’s understood. “Relationships are tricky, and the good ones are even trickier,” says Vance. “You can say something with a certain hope and intent, but how it’s received is someone else’s responsibility, and so much can get lost.” Meanwhile, on “It Always Was” (born from an off-the-cuff jam with singer/songwriter Bonnie Bishop), Vance muses on love’s preternatural ability to soften our worst insecurities, arriving at a warmly revelatory track touched with the exuberance of its creation. “That one came from the two of us messing around in a friend’s rehearsal space, letting loose like teenagers,” he says. “We weren’t even trying to write a song, but ‘It Always Was’ just fell out, and somehow we were able to recreate that feeling in the studio later on.” 

Also featuring songs co-written with luminaries like Lori McKenna, Natalie Hemby, and Ross Copperman, IF reflects a newfound spirit of receptivity and willingness to loosen his grip on the creative process—an unfettered sense of possibility encapsulated within the album’s title, which Vance refers to as “remarkably powerful for such a tiny little word.” And in embracing a more expansive and open-hearted outlook, he’s made space for the unexpected turns that often yield the most meaningful work. “I feel more open than I’ve ever felt in my life,” Vance reveals. “Maybe with those seven albums I was trying to prove something to myself—that I could set out to do something for the right reasons, and then actually see it through. But now I don’t feel like there’s anything left to prove, if there ever even was. I just feel free.”