London post-punk innovators TV Priest have announced their long-awaited third studio album, Cartoons, due for release on 6th November. Alongside the announcement, the band have unveiled the record’s lead single, Love Song (A Good Kind Of Weapon), a striking and unexpectedly tender statement that signals a bold new direction for one of Britain’s most adventurous alternative bands.
TV Priest
The new album follows June’s comeback single The Mud Never Dries, which marked TV Priest’s first new music in four years with an abrasive fusion of post-punk, drum & bass rhythms, electronic textures and spoken word. By contrast, Love Song (A Good Kind Of Weapon) reveals a more vulnerable side of the quartet, weaving together sweeping strings, shimmering synths and understated electronics beneath one of vocalist Charlie Drinkwater’s most melodic performances to date.
While TV Priest have often explored political unease, societal fragmentation and existential anxiety, their latest single turns its attention towards something altogether more personal.
Explaining the inspiration behind the song, Drinkwater says: “Love motivated us to form the band, yet we’d never written a song exploring romantic love or addressed it as a statement of love to our partners. We wanted to explore how love is both domestic and extraordinary. It’s in the washing up done without asking or the flowers bought on the way home from work, but it’s also in the grand gestures and the late-night conversations. Love is a weapon for righteous change and goodness.”
That emotional openness appears to define Cartoons, an album born from a period of reflection and creative reinvention. Following the acclaimed releases of Uppers and My Other People, the band deliberately slowed their writing process, opening the studio doors to a wider circle of collaborators and embracing a broader musical palette.
The result is a record that stretches well beyond the boundaries of post-punk. Acoustic instrumentation, piano, fiddle, manipulated field recordings and expansive electronic production sit comfortably alongside angular guitars and driving rhythms, creating an album that feels simultaneously intimate and ambitious.
Drinkwater describes Cartoons as an exploration of uncertainty, identity and modern life: “It’s a record about confusion. About the small, daily unspooling of the worlds we thought we knew, and the strange new ones being born in their slipstream. About heroes and villains and the increasingly thin line between them. About surveillance and sanctuary. About me, and sometimes about you.”
Perhaps most significantly, the frontman reveals that this is the first TV Priest record where he fully embraced singing without restraint: “I stopped being afraid to sing; to carry a melody out in the open without the old reflex to hide something. There is hiss and choir, machine and breath.”
That willingness to strip away previous barriers appears to have transformed the band’s songwriting. While Cartoons retains the urgency and intelligence that have become hallmarks of TV Priest’s work, it also introduces warmer textures, more immediate choruses and a level of emotional directness rarely heard in their earlier catalogue.
Rather than abandoning their post-punk roots, TV Priest seem intent on broadening them, drawing inspiration from alternative rock, electronic music and organic soundscapes to create what promises to be their most expansive release yet.
To celebrate the album’s arrival, the band will embark on a series of intimate UK in-store performances this November, giving fans an opportunity to experience the new material in uniquely close surroundings.
With Cartoons, TV Priest appear ready to begin a compelling new chapter—one that balances experimentation with accessibility while proving that vulnerability can be every bit as powerful as confrontation.
Upcoming UK In-Store Performances:
NOVEMBER
6th – Rough Trade Denmark Street, London (Two Performances)
7th – Crash, Leeds
8th – Jacaranda, Liverpool
9th – Rough Trade, Bristol
11th – Banquet x Fighting Cocks, Kingston
12th – Pie & Vinyl, Southsea
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