“Love is a weapon for righteous change”: TV Priest announce third album Cartoons, share “Love Song (A Good Kind of Weapon)”

It marks the London art-punk group’s first full-length since 2022’s My Other People, a gap broken only by June’s single “The Mud Never Dries”. Vocalist Charlie Drinkwater outlines the band's thinking behind the new record, specifically the lead single:

“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. This was a response to that: a shedding of any artifice and an expression of desire. 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, the late-night conversations, or the personal wonder when you learn something new about someone despite all those years together. And, after all, love is a weapon for righteous change and goodness. It’s a statement of resistance when the current world’s mood music seems to be hatred and violence.”

The album that surrounds that song emerged from what the band describe as a period of self-reckoning, written over two quiet years by Drinkwater and guitarist Alex Sprogis, then opened up to a wider cast of collaborators. Piano, fiddle, and birdsong recordings sit alongside programmed drums and a low end that draws from dance production.

“It is the most communal thing we’ve ever made, and the most exposed,” Drinkwater says. “It is also, somehow, our most direct record and our most expansive. The songs come for you quicker now; the choruses are not embarrassed to mean what they say.”

To mark the release, TV Priest will play a run of UK instore shows beginning with two performances at Rough Trade Denmark Street in London on 6 November, before heading to Crash in Leeds, Liverpool’s Jacaranda, Rough Trade Bristol, Kingston’s Banquet x Fighting Cocks and Pie & Vinyl in Southsea.

Cartoons artwork

Cartoons tracklist

“Just So You Know”
“Cartoons”
“Ultraviolet Blue”
“The Mud Never Dries”
“A Song From The Riverbed”
“Love Song (A Good Kind of Weapon)”
“Into Shape”
“Daily Recommendations”
“I Am”
“Epping”