TV Priest return with their most abrasive single yet, ‘The Mud Never Dries’

TV Priest are back, and four years on from their last release, they’ve come back swinging. New single ‘The Mud Never Dries‘ is a jolt to the system — all accelerant basslines and caustic, shapeshifting noise, like the song itself is trying to outrun its own themes of inescapability.

Across two albums — ‘Uppers’ (2021) and ‘My Other People’ (2022) — TV Priest have built a reputation as one of the more probing, curious bands working today, with a knack for turning the existential into something communal. ‘The Mud Never Dries‘ might be their most abrasive moment to date, but the thoughtfulness is still there underneath the noise. The track grapples with the weight of history — what we inherit, personally and collectively, and how it shapes us whether we like it or not. “From womb to tomb to eternity,” as the lyrics go.

Vocalist Charlie Drinkwater breaks down the track:

“‘The Mud Never Dries’ is the most abrasive thing we’ve made, a collision of drum and bass, post-punk, electronic data samples and spoken word that doesn’t settle into any one shape. We wrote it thinking about history as sediment. The way the past doesn’t really leave us. It settles, layer on layer, until we’re walking on ground we don’t recognise but somehow keep retracing. My own history, our shared political one, the same loop, the same refusal to look down or look back. The title felt honest in that way. Nothing dries. Nothing finishes. We keep stepping in it.”

On the accompanying video, shot with longtime collaborator Charles Gall, Drinkwater adds:

“‘The Mud Never Dries’ is about the moment the mask of history slips and we ask ourselves if we’re just doomed to repeat it. We wanted the video to reflect that; it needed to feel free but watched, paranoid, intense, and most importantly unashamed. Shot over an afternoon with my close collaborator Charles Gall it shows me left alone in a dead office space, suit on and shoes off, finally giving in to something animal and letting a performance pour out of me. A body remembering it was never really tame.”

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