In the Goth Kitchen this week our Brian has a chinwag with Charlie (vocals) and Alex (guitar) from HOT (not a) post-punk band, TV Priest! They discuss the band’s sound, making music with your mates, old bands, not having an audience, what it’ll be like to play live, getting signed to Sub Pop, their debut album Uppers, future plans and everyone loses it in the QUICK-FIRE round!
They signed to Sub Pop after only playing one gig in an industrial freezer in November 2019, with other concerts cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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 and 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 disseminating 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, the one thing that gets you through is giving your love to those who 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 narrowmindedness. 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.
The AF GANG is an online community of like-minded souls. A Facebook group where you can be who you want to be when you want to be without the fear of ridicule or judgement. Created through the love of IDLES, naturally growing to encompass the love of all music, the community has grown to more than 30,000 people. The Goth Kitchen was created during the lockdown of 2020, with IDLES chatting with Brian in his kitchen on Zoom to entertain us while we were all stuck indoors. Since then, interviews from the Goth Kitchen have become a regular occurrence with more and more bands coming in for a chat, including; DITZ, Frauds, JOHN, ĠENN, Crows and many more.
The Goth Kitchen will be back on Wednesday, 24th March and every fortnight thereafter, so keep an eye on the YouTube channel to see who is up next and whether or not they like Marmite.