TV Priest have shared ‘The Mud Never Dries’, their first new music in four years, out now via Kartel Music Group.
The London post-punk quartet last released music in 2022 with their second album My Other People, following their acclaimed Sub Pop debut Uppers in 2021. ‘The Mud Never Dries’ is a significant step forward from either record in terms of sonic ambition: opening with a breakbeat blast of hyperactive drum programming, it surges into fractured post-punk before collapsing into spoken word and mounting electronic noise. Vocalist Charlie Drinkwater has described it as “the most abrasive thing we’ve made, a collision of drum and bass, post-punk, electronic data samples and spoken word that doesn’t settle into any one shape.”
The song’s conceptual core is history as sediment: the way the past does not disappear but accumulates, layer on layer, until we are walking on ground we cannot recognise but keep retracing. “Nothing dries,” Drinkwater has said. “Nothing finishes. We keep stepping in it.” The video, directed by long-time collaborator Charles Gall and shot in a single afternoon in a deserted office space, mirrors that sense of confinement and repetition, Drinkwater delivering an increasingly unhinged performance as the track builds.
Rolling Stone UK included the single in their Hot New Songs playlist for this week, the company of which includes Blossoms, Hot Chip and Lynks.
Editors’ Picks
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source whynow.co.uk ’
