TV Priest add fiddle and birdsong to new album ‘Cartoons’

TV Priest have released new single ‘Just So You Know’, ahead of new album Cartoons, out November 6th via AMK / Kartel Music Group.

It’s the third new song the band have shared this year, following ‘The Mud Never Dries’ and ‘Love Song (A Good Kind of Weapon)’. Opening on solemn strings before morphing into a groove-heavy, muscular indie burner, the track highlights both the compositional detail and directness that run through Cartoons.

Frontman Charlie Drinkwater has described ‘Just So You Know’ as a break-up song, only the other half of the relationship is technology, framed around constant scrolling, dwindling attention for the people who matter, and a question he says he keeps avoiding: “is any of this actually any good for me?”

Following two previous albums, 2021’s Uppers and 2022’s My Other People, Cartoons finds TV Priest, core duo Charlie Drinkwater and Alex Sprogis, working from a different starting point. Written over two quiet years, the record brings in a wider circle of collaborators and a broader sonic palette, piano, fiddle and reworked birdsong recordings sitting alongside American alt-rock touchstones like R.E.M., Radiohead, The National and Foals, now pushed up against electronic production and programmed drums. Drinkwater has called it the band’s most communal record to date, and its most exposed, a more personal and political record about confusion, surveillance and trying, often failing, to move through work, family and love.

The band play a run of UK instore shows this autumn, including a Halloween date at London’s Blondie’s as special guests to Crows, before a full UK headline tour in January and February 2027.

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

TV Priest UK instore shows:

• 31 Oct – London – Blondie’s (special guests to Crows)
• 6 Nov – London – Rough Trade Denmark Street (two performances)
• 7 Nov – Leeds – Crash
• 8 Nov – Liverpool – Jacaranda
• 9 Nov – Bristol – Rough Trade
• 11 Nov – Kingston – Banquet x Fighting Cocks
• 12 Nov – Southsea – Pie & Vinyl

TV Priest UK headline tour 2027:

• 25 Jan – Bristol – The Louisiana
• 26 Jan – Birmingham – Hare & Hounds 2
• 27 Jan – London – The George Tavern
• 28 Jan – Brighton – Green Door Store
• 30 Jan – Manchester – The Abbey
• 31 Jan – Glasgow – McChuills
• 1 Feb – Leeds – Oporto

Cartoons is out November 6th via AMK / Kartel Music Group.

Editors’ Picks

• Why Joni Mitchell has always been scathing about Madonna
  Madonna has described Joni Mitchell as the most profound female influence on her songwriting. Mitchell, by contrast, has called her a terrible role model and compared her to Nero.
• The one guitarist Kurt Cobain dreamed would join Nirvana
  Long before Nirvana conquered the world, Cobain had his eye on one of alternative rock’s most distinctive guitarists to complete his lineup.
• The Fleetwood Mac song Don Henley wrongly thinks is about him
  For decades, Don Henley has insisted that Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Sara’ tells the story of their relationship. Nicks has never agreed.
• Why Sinead O’Connor called her hit-maker Prince a ‘devil’
  Never one to hold her tongue, Sinead O’Connor referred to Prince as a “devil” in her 2021 memoir Rememberings.
• The two “standout tracks” of Pink Floyd’s career, according to David Gilmour
  The Pink Floyd guitarist reflected on the band’s creative arc and revealed the songs he believes stand above the rest.
• Why Andy Warhol “loathed” David Bowie’s tribute to him
  David Bowie and Andy Warhol’s worlds collided in 1971 – but it wasn’t the artistic love-in Bowie hoped for