Album Review: TV Priest - “Uppers”

 

TV Priest seem to be gaining a reputation as ones to watch among the alternative music press - having released two highly acclaimed singles last year, they've recently signed to Sub Pop records and thus we now have their debut album.

Similar to Idles or Girls In Synthesis, Uppers is most definitely not an easy listen - opener The Big Curve kicks in with a dischordant riff and some Mark E Smith indebted vocals and Press Gang follows a similar path with the lyrics veering from angry polemic to obtuse metaphor seemingly straight after each other. It continues much the same with the content varying from good stuff (the anti-Covid Journal Of A Plague Year and Slideshow's skewering of idiotic keyboard warriors) to songs which frustratingly miss the mark like the sluggish Leg Room and the dull Fathers And Sons.

The main issue I have with Uppers is that, like it or not, there's an elephant in the room here and its name is Ultra Mono. And, while I suspect that TV Priest are probably getting a bit sick of the comparisons by now, the harsh fact is that Uppers just lacks the force of Idles or the sheer righteous foul-mouthed fury of Dead Sheeran or the panic-attack brutality of Girls In Synthesis. It kind of feels like this band are cautiously circling the wagons of Tory voters, press baron scumbags and hedge fund bastards instead of charging in with the arrows flying and tomahawks raised the way the aforementioned are.

All in all, TV Priest are a group with plenty of promise but as things stand, they've kind of left themselves floundering in the wake of other bands who've just done this sort of thing a lot better in the last 12 months with this opening salvo. They deserve a second chance but it's safe to say they've got a bit of ground to make up with their second album if they want to avoid being first in the firing line when the critical tide turns against the political post-punk movement...

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌑🌑🌑🌑 (6/10)

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