One Life Stand

The fourth album was released on 1 February 2010 by Parlophone in the United Kingdom and on 9 February by Astralwerks in the United States. The title song came out as a single on 30 November 2009. Taylor called the album the most warm and soulful record they had made. It reached 11 in Britain.

It was made differently from the earlier records. Taylor said it was made with time rather than in short bursts, because the band was not touring. The first song written was Alley Cats, the only one both written and performed on the 2008 tour. Parts were recorded in Goddard's bedroom with Cubase, then built up in a basement studio with Logic Pro and GarageBand. Hand Me Down Your Love, written by Taylor, took months of added synthesizers and drum parts and ended up with something like 160 tracks, according to Goddard. Goddard wrote Brothers and Taylor wrote Slush, and only three or four songs were written as a group. Taylor wrote some of them while holding his newborn daughter.

Charles Hayward of This Heat played the drums behind the last chorus of Hand Me Down Your Love and plays and sings on Slush. Fimber Bravo played the steel pans on the title track. The band also used flugelhorn alongside the synthesizers and drum machines.

Several songs began with borrowed sparks. Goddard misremembered a Les Miserables melody while watching Susan Boyle on television, which started I Feel Better, and Taylor likened its chorus to Madonna's La Isla Bonita. Goddard wrote Keep Quiet right after seeing Boyle sing I Dreamed a Dream. Taylor said Alley Cats was influenced by Arthur Russell's That's Us/Wild Combination but ended up closer to Fleetwood Mac, and that We Have Love shares the euphoria of Donna Summer's I Feel Love.

Darren Wall, known as Wallzo, designed the cover with Owen Clarke: a suspended marble head, inspired by photographs of statues being lowered into place in coloured slings. The band could not agree on another title, and Taylor called it a dumb pun on turning a one-night stand into someone's whole life. A special edition on two 200-gram records was limited to 1,000 hand-numbered copies, and the deluxe CD added a making-of DVD and three live tracks recorded in Brixton in 2008. The band played I Feel Better and One Life Stand on Later... with Jools Holland on 13 April 2010, then toured with The xx in the United States.

Pitchfork's Scott Plagenhoef called it their most consistent and most complete record, though it was missing an A-list single on a par with Boy From School, Over and Over or Ready for the Floor. He found that about two-thirds of it was built on proclamations of long-lasting love. Domino reissued it on 17 July 2026.