Uppers – Vinyl LP

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 it’s own. Debut single “House Of York,” is a searing examination of the Monarchy set over wiry post-punk and fronted by a Mark E. Smith-like mouthpiece in Charlie Drinkwater, the coronavirus pandemic hit. Taking musical cues from post-punk stalwarts The Fall and Protomartyr as well as the mechanical, pulsating grooves of krautrock, it’s a record that moves with an untamed energy.