TV Priest

TV Priest are back, but the sermon’s not the same. “This is a song
about leisure, our fears and pleasures,” vocalist Charlie Drinkwater
announces as the group’s exhilarating new album growls into gear –
words that at Cirst may seem to signal more of what came before. After
all, the Sub Pop innovators have become one of Britain’s most vital
new bands on the back of furious songs about a world undone by dark
desires, both primal and political. But that sound Drinkwater
described, tapping into our leisures – “automatic dreams on 65”
screens,” the lyric continues – couldn’t feel more different this time
around. “It’s a pretty big evolution,” beams the frontman, reClecting on
how Cartoons sees TV Priest abandon their format post-punk pulpit.
The broadcast now is a little more tender. A little more melody mixed
in the Molotov cocktail. It’s the sound of a band thunderously reborn.
But arriving at it almost broke them apart.

“We had to have a self-reckoning about why we were doing this,” says
Drinkwater, who found himself in a place of existential crisis after the
success of their Cirst two albums. 2021’s Uppers and 2022’s My Other
People had catapulted the duo – Drinkwater and life-long collaborator
Alex Sprogis, who he met aged two – onto stages and playlists
worldwide. Signed to one of the most storied labels in indie music
history, the pair were championed by outlets like Pitchfork and
“playing all over the world, getting to do amazing things. But it was
weirdly discombobulating. To go from being someone that’s always
played in bands that no one’s ever really given a shit about to all this,”
the vocalist recalls, “was disorientating.” To quote Cartoons’ A Song
From The Riverbed: “I lost myself.” Some dark days grappling with
purpose, their position in the world – and even body image – followed.

Did TV Priest become ensnared in the exact thing their songs sought to
skewer? On coruscating tracks like early single ‘Runner Up’, the band –
then a four-piece – had Cired shots at late capitalism. But the more the
band grew, the more they felt a self-applied pressure to play more.
Record more. Release more. Be more productive. “I really felt that
upward bell curve of needing to ascend, ascend, ascend,” says

Drinkwater. It left his psyche in a rough state. “My mental health
wasn’t great. A lot of things had gotten mixed up in the whirlpool.”

Eventually, a conversation with his wife, with whom he’s now a parent,
helped turn the tide. “There was a point where she said to me, is this
worth it? Because it doesn’t seem to be making you happy.” The
vocalist realised then that happiness and joy – softer emotions he
carries and prizes as a person – weren’t well represented in TV
Priest’s music. Each night on stage, he felt expected to conjure a
certain anger, “like a boxing match where come out punching. It had to
have this certain kind of energy – a certain kind of aggression.” Just
one problem – this wasn’t him. It wasn’t wholly either of them, truth
be told.

So he and Sprogis went home to their families and day jobs, as a
designer and architect respectively. As they did, they began carefully
cooking up a new sonic identity for TV Priest. One forged from “a place
of deeper vulnerability and honesty,” he says. The currency of the
world in 2026 is anger. It’s what keeps us glued to our phones. It has
Cilled our streets. What would it look like to break from that, musically,
the pair began to wonder? “If I’m only reaching people through
aggression, what does that do? What does that feed back into the
world?” asks the frontman. “If you keep giving out breeze blocks as
birthday presents, you can expect them in return.”

The result was a record with surprising shades of REM, Radiohead,
The National and Foals – the Cire and philosophising of their previous
work still present, but now accompanied by a bigger sprawl of gentler
instruments. Piano. Fiddle. Bird song recordings ruptured and pieced
back together again, “exploring the intersection between digitalism
and nature.” Everything was on the table as the duo rewired their
sound. “This was the Cirst record that we wrote starting with an
acoustic guitar,” says Drinkwater. “Everything else has always begun in
a loud room.”

They still reach violent volumes as and when they elect to, on tracks
like lead single ‘The Mud Never Dies’, which the group call “the most
abrasive thing we’ve made.” Channelling drum and bass, it’s a song
that “never settles into one shape,” says Drinkwater. But elsewhere on
Cartoons, there are sensitive surprises. Its title track chronicles
watching animations with his child, wondering what sort of world
they’re destined to inherit. ‘I Am’ strips everything down to an
acoustic and Drinkwater’s naked vocal, while ‘Epping’ is an electronic
reverie that blooms and blooms with beauty.

“There’s a lot of lyrics about entropy,” says the frontman, “this idea
that we’re kind of living in a world of perpetual motion and perpetual
chaos, and the only way to get through it is through connection and
love.” The world is still a stiCling place on Cartoons, overrun by
nefarious corporate forces. The subjects of their ire haven’t
disappeared. But a new way of moving through their feelings, and
maybe yours as well, presents itself on these ten tracks. “There’s a
deeper sense of worry rather than righteous indignation. We’re still
the same people as we were Cive years ago – we still hold the same
political values and the same moral compasses. But I think there’s a
different way of dealing with it.”

The result of that new approach? One of 2026’s most ambitious,
invigorating listens, lit up by soaring vocal melodies and timbre twists
at every turn. TV Priest are back, but the sermon’s not the same. On
Cartoons, it’s better, it’s brighter, it’s bolder. The congregation can now
return to their pews. A brand-new heart-rending homily has begun.

—

20% OFF FOOD WITH YOUR TICKET

We’ve teamed up with our neighbours at Neon Cactus and Power, Corruption & Lies to offer 20% off your total food bill for some delicious pre gig scran, please reserve your space below on the bar you would like to eat in, and bring your gig tickets to confirm your discount.

Neon Cactus – tacos, burritos & wings

Power, Corruption & Lies – Bao Buns & Dim Sum