TV Priest have announced their signing to Sub Pop following four powerful singles, and will now release their debut album ‘Uppers’ on February 5, 2021.
In celebration of this news, they’ve shared the album’s lead single Decoration, with theatrical video directed by Joe Wheatley. Watch the Decoration video clip via YouTube below.
On Decoration, TV Priest’s Charlie Drinkwater said: “We often think of it as a ‘walking down the road’ song, like you’re strolling along a street and lots of little vignettes of life are coming your way. The absurd in the mundane feels apt too. Once again this sense of a kind of late capitalism, Ayn Rand style ‘personal progression’ being an utter myth. It’s all just Decoration! Probably a favourite from the record.”
TV Priest’s politically urgent, mechanical, subtly humorous (and self-deprecating) post-punk was hard for Sub Pop to ignore, especially following standalone singles House of York and Runner Up, as well as ‘Uppers’ early tracks This Island and Slideshow.
‘Uppers’ tracklisting
1. The Big Curve
2. Press Gang
3. Leg Room
4. Journal of a Plague Year
5. History Week
6. Decoration
7. Slideshow
8. Fathers and Sons
9. the ref
10. Powers of Ten
11. This Island
12. Saintless
‘Uppers’ is now available to preorder via Sub Pop.
(‘Uppers was originally set to be released through UK label Hand in Hive next month, but will now be available worldwide in February through Sub Pop).
LPs purchased through megamart.subpop.com, and select independent retailers in North America will receive the limited Loser edition on gold splattered vinyl (while supplies last). Meanwhile, LP preorders in the U.K. and Europe through select independent retailers will receive the Loser edition on gray marbled vinyl (while supplies last)
Catch TV Priest live at the following dates next year:
20th April – Bristol – Rough Trade
21st April – Southampton – Heartbreakers
22nd April – London – The Shacklewell Arms
23rd April – Brighton – Prince Albert
29th April – Cardiff – Clwb Ifor Bach
30th April – Yes (Basement) – Manchester
More information on TV Priest?
It’s tempting to think that you have all the answers, screaming your gospel every day with certainty and anger. Life isn’t quite like that though, and the debut album from London four-piece TV Priest instead embraces the beautiful and terrifying unknowns that exist personally, politically and culturally.
Posing as many questions as it answers, ‘Uppers’ is a thunderous opening statement that continues the UK’s recent resurgence of grubby, furious post-punk music. It says something very different though – something completely its own.
Four childhood friends who made music together as teenagers before drifting apart and then, somewhat inevitably, back together late in 2019, TV Priest was born out of a need to create together once again, and brings with it a wealth of experience and exhaustion picked up in the band’s years of pursuing “real life” and “real jobs,” something those teenagers never had.
In November 2019, the band – vocalist Charlie Drinkwater, guitarist Alex Sprogis, bass and keys player Nic Bueth, and drummer Ed Kelland – played their first show, to a smattering of friends in what they describe as an “industrial freezer” in the warehouse district of Hackney Wick. “It was like the pub in Peep Show with a washing machine just in the middle…” Charlie laughs, remembering how they dodged Star Wars memorabilia and deep fat fryers while making their first statement as a band.
Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a precedent for introducing an album during a global pandemic, but among the general sense of anxiety and unease pervading everything at the moment, TV Priest’s entrance in April with the release of debut single House of York – a searing examination of the Monarchy – served as a breath of fresh air among the chaos, its anger and confusion making some kind of twisted sense to the nation’s fried brains.
It’s the same continued global sense of anxiety that will greet the release of ‘Uppers’, and it’s an album that has a lot to say right now. Taking musical cues from The Fall and Protomartyr as well as the mechanical, pulsating grooves of Kosmische Musik, it’s a record that moves with an untamed energy. Over the top of this rumbling musical machine is vocalist Charlie, a cuttingly funny, angry, confused, real frontman.
Decoration, ‘Uppers’’ centrepiece, has a streamlined groove soundtracking Charlie’s lyrical vignettes that captures the absurdity and mundanity of life. Its opening and closing line (“I’ve never seen a dog do what that dog does”) is a misremembered quote by Simon Cowell about a performing dog on Britain’s Got Talent. Charlie says, “We often said it in the studio as a kind of in-joke when someone did something good or unexpected. Having already toyed around with the ‘Through to the next round’ line,’ this seemed too good to leave out.” And the chorus “It’s all just decoration” is credited to the 2-year old niece of Alex’s fiancé, who reassured him after he pretended to be scared by Halloween decorations.
Press Gang is inspired by Charlie’s grandfather’s life’s work as a photojournalist and war correspondent on the UK’s Fleet Street from the 1950s to the early 1980s. The song is about the shifting role in the dissemination of information and ideas, and how the prevailing narrative that the Death of Print Media has contributed to a “post truth” world.
Album closer Saintless is the most personal and raw moment on ‘Uppers’. Charlie wrote a note to his son after his birth, following a difficult period his wife had faced during and after the pregnancy. The song is about how as parents we’re fallible and human, and while the world can be a difficult place at times the one thing that gets you through is giving your love to those that need and appreciate it. Saintless rides a motorik beat, with guitars, bass and synths building layers of intensity and emotion that replicate and swell with the message of the track.
‘Uppers’ sees TV Priest explicitly and outwardly trying to avoid narrow-mindedness. ‘Uppers’ sees TV Priest taking musical and personal risks, reaching outside of themselves and trying to make sense of this increasingly messy world. It’s a band and a record that couldn’t arrive at a more perfect time.
