Isaac Wood

A Cambridgeshire band, formed twice

Wood, born in 1998 or 1999, came up through a school-age group in East Cambridgeshire: Nervous Conditions, formed in 2014 with Tyler Hyde, Lewis Evans, Georgia Ellery, May Kershaw and Charlie Wayne. That band broke up in early 2018 after sexual assault allegations were made against its frontman, Connor Browne.

The same players reconvened in Cambridge later in 2018 without Browne and without drummer Jonny Pyke, and this time Wood took the microphone as well as a guitar. The new name came from Wikipedia's random article button, which landed on the Black Country New Road in the West Midlands. Luke Mark joined on guitar in 2019. The group became a fixture at the Windmill in Brixton, and two singles on Speedy Wunderground — "Athens, France" in January 2019 and "Sunglasses" that July — carried Wood's method out of the room: mostly spoken, sliding into half-sung passages and then into shouting, with the band swelling behind him.

Two records, then a letter

For the First Time arrived on Ninja Tune on 5 February 2021, reached No. 4 on the UK albums chart and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. The follow-up was cut in July 2021 at Chale Abbey Studios on the Isle of Wight, produced by Sergio Maschetzko, the band's own live sound engineer, and released on 4 February 2022 as Ants from Up There. It entered the UK chart at No. 3, scored 92 on Metacritic — the third most acclaimed album of 2022 on that site — took Best New Music at Pitchfork with an 8.4, and a full ten from The Line of Best Fit. Its closing track, "Basketball Shoes", runs past twelve minutes.

Four days before that release, on 31 January 2022, Wood announced he was leaving. He wrote that he had been feeling sad and afraid, that it had become the kind of feeling that makes it hard to play guitar and sing at the same time, and called his bandmates six of the greatest people he knew. A Roundhouse show the following week went, along with the band's first North American headline tour, much of which had already sold out.

The remaining six carried on under the same name and declined to perform the songs he had sung. Hyde, Ellery and Kershaw took over the writing and the vocals, and Forever Howlong followed on 4 April 2025.

Four years with nothing in them

There was a little solo work before the exit, released as The Guest: "Good Dog vs. Bad Dog" with James Martin in 2019, and "Theme From Failure, Pt. 1" in 2020. After January 2022 the record is close to blank. No releases appeared under his name, no shows were played, and setlist.fm still holds not a single Isaac Wood setlist as of 1 November 2026.

The album he walked away from kept accumulating — third at Beats Per Minute, fifth at Paste and Sputnikmusic in the 2022 lists — while the man who wrote it said nothing in public for four years.

A hidden verse, and a band with Anaïs

The first sign came on 5 June 2026, buried in Phoebe Bridgers' announcement of The Lost Tour: Alex G would open the North American run, and Wood would open all twelve European dates. It was the first time he had been billed anywhere since 2022.

Confirmation of the collaboration came on record on 14 August 2026, when Bridgers released Lost Weekend. A track called "Best Dressed" was hidden in the CD's pre-gap ahead of the opener "The Outside" — reachable only by rewinding roughly four minutes from track one — and placed as track 17 on the vinyl. Wood sings a verse on it, alongside writing and production credits for Conor Oberst, Jack Antonoff and Jon Brion.

Wood then corrected the assumption that this was a lone return. On Instagram he said it was going to be a band, and that he and Anaïs Meiringer — the French singer who records as Anaïs — had written the songs together. The project still has no name.

No label, no management, and a public scramble for money

On 22 September 2026 Wood used Instagram Stories to ask fans whether anyone could help him and Anaïs pay for the tour, promising repayment. When people took it for a joke, he said it was not, and asked for someone to cover the whole thing or half of it.

It was resolved within hours. He explained that they had no label and no management, that they were genuinely independent, and that he simply had not known an artist could take an advance against a tour of that size. He secured one, and said they would be playing all new songs.

That exchange is the clearest statement of where he stands going into these shows. The reputation is enormous and entirely inherited from two records he no longer performs; the operation underneath it is two people who had to be told how arena touring is financed.

The run that is about to start

The European leg of The Lost Tour opens at the 3Arena in Dublin on 23 November 2026 and finishes at the Avicii Arena in Stockholm on 12 December, taking in Co-op Live in Manchester, the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, bp pulse LIVE in Birmingham, two nights at the O2 in London on 1 and 2 December, then the Adidas Arena in Paris, Forest National in Brussels, the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, the PSD Bank Dome in Düsseldorf, the Velodrom in Berlin and the Royal Arena in Copenhagen.

Every date is phone-free, with Yondr pouches at the door across the whole tour — which means the first public performances of Wood's new material will not be filmed by the audience. Bridgers has been playing sets of around 27 songs on the North American half, drawing across her catalogue; the October stop in Salt Lake City included "Motion Sickness", "Garden Song", "Kyoto", "Scott Street" and "I Know the End".