Tom Iansek has been quietly building one of Australian music’s more distinctive bodies of work for the better part of two decades, through Big Scary, No Mono, and a production resume that spans much of the country’s independent scene. But it’s as #1 Dads, his solo vehicle since 2011, that the Melbourne-born, now London-based songwriter strips everything back to something more exposed and deliberate.

Today, Iansek announces Every Little Fire, the fourth #1 Dads album, due October 16 via Pieater, and shares its first single, ‘Already Something’. LISTEN HERE + PRE-SAVE EVERY LITTLE FIRE HERE.

The record arrives six years after 2020’s Golden Repair and follows a period of profound personal upheaval – a transatlantic relocation, a growing family, the particular vertigo of dismantling one life and building another from scratch. “It was not an easy thing to do,” Iansek says. “It has been an insane, wonderful, chaotic, intense and joyful period of my life.” Every Little Fire, in both title and execution, takes that turbulence seriously.

WATCH: ‘Already Something’ (Official Music Video)

‘Already Something’ is a generous place to begin. A string-laden, blue-eyed soul piece with Motown in its bones, the song is Iansek’s most openly romantic, “the only true love song on the record”, he says, “a tribute to my partner of many years.” Where much of Every Little Fire circles the pressures of life in your thirties – families started, businesses built, homes bought and left behind – this one looks at what survives all of that. “Moving through difficult things as a partnership can challenge that partnership,” Iansek says, “but it can build strength and resilience.” This song celebrates the tough things that build something far more durable. “Who did I find at the end of the fire?” he sings. “It’s only ever been you.” The answer arrives not as a greeting card sentiment but as something harder-won: proof of a thing built rather than simply felt. Gus Rigby, whose saxophone solo on fan favourite ‘Camberwell’ became one of the most beloved moments in the #1 Dads catalogue, returns here to similar effect.

Produced and mixed by Iansek himself, in small rooms, including a DIY bedroom studio, Every Little Fire reflects the conditions of its making. Imperfections were left in. Longer, unvarnished takes. Tempo fluctuations. Breaths. The result is an album that sounds handmade in the best sense: intimate without being precious, and honest without being confessional for its own sake.