TV Priest confront confusion and digital overload on new album Cartoons
TV Priest have released their third album, Cartoons, via AMK and Kartel Music Group, accompanied by a new video for Daily Recommendations.
The record arrives ahead of a run of UK instore performances this month and a seven-date headline tour in January and February 2027. Across its ten tracks, Cartoons finds the band turning its gaze inward, addressing digital overload, surveillance, work, family and the more private cycles of self-doubt.
Recent singles The Mud Never Dries, Love Song (A Good Kind of Weapon), Just So You Know and the title track have offered different entry points into the album’s wider sound, where jagged guitars and programmed beats sit alongside piano, fiddle, field recordings and electronic detail.
A reckoning in Daily Recommendations
The video for Daily Recommendations lands alongside the album release. Vocalist Charlie Drinkwater said the song emerged from a difficult period and became an attempt to interrogate his relationship with self-doubt.
“Daily Recommendations came out of a bad patch,” Drinkwater said. “I’d begun a new course of drugs which put me in a more lucid state and begun to question if there was a ‘normal’ version of myself. It’s a reckoning with myself in a way, and hints that perhaps there are times I can luxuriate in my feelings of self doubt and treat it as a warm and safe space from harm which keeps the cycle going. It’s a reminder to myself that sometimes you’re not ok and that’s okay.”
Machine, breath and a more exposed record
Drinkwater describes Cartoons as the band’s most communal and exposed work to date, written with guitarist Alex Sprogis over two quieter years and opened up to a broader group of collaborators.
“The songs grew louder and stranger and more tender for it,” he said. “It is the most communal thing we’ve ever made, and the most exposed.
“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. But underneath, the ground has shifted. American alt rock leans against electronic production. Alex’s guitars run into programmed drums, organic field recordings, digital data samples, and a low end that takes cues from dance production.”
The full Cartoons track listing
- 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
Instores now, headline dates next year
TV Priest’s immediate run includes instores in London, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol, Kingston and Southsea, before the band head out for a UK headline run in early 2027. The tour includes a Brighton stop at Green Door Store on 28 January.
- 6 November 2026 – Rough Trade Denmark Street, London (two performances, instore)
- 7 November 2026 – Crash, Leeds (instore)
- 8 November 2026 – Jacaranda, Liverpool (instore)
- 9 November 2026 – Rough Trade, Bristol (instore)
- 11 November 2026 – Banquet x Fighting Cocks, Kingston (instore)
- 12 November 2026 – Pie & Vinyl, Southsea (instore)
- 25 January 2027 – The Louisiana, Bristol
- 26 January 2027 – Hare & Hounds 2, Birmingham
- 27 January 2027 – The George Tavern, London
- 28 January 2027 – Green Door Store, Brighton
- 30 January 2027 – The Abbey, Manchester
- 31 January 2027 – McChuills, Glasgow
- 1 February 2027 – Oporto, Leeds
More TV Priest on Punkinfocus: TV Priest share Just So You Know and announce 2027 UK tour (September 2026) · TV Priest break four-year silence with The Mud Never Dries (June 2026) · TV PRIEST Sign to Sub Pop Records (October 2020)
