NEW SINGLE BOOTS POCKET COFFIN OUT 2nd MAY 2025
I: MARK WHITESIDE
1. Who is ‘ TV FACE ’
TV FACE is three socially awkward weirdos who should know better. Brigit (bass/vox), Steeny (drums), and sTeVe (guitar/vox).
2. For someone that is yet to discover you, how would you describe your music?
Erm…. noisy, noisy, noisy … um … post- and pre- punk noisy pop.
Others are often better at describing it: we quite like this one – ‘the sardonic anger of Shellac and the concise high-energy poptastic bounce of Pixies’, which is how a promoter once billed us.
3. What inspired you as an artist?
the smell of food trucks at our first festival, television (the medium, not the band), the destruction of the world, absurdism … the opportunity to practice the idea of freedom.
4. What Is Yor Pre-Show Routine? Do you have any Diva demands?
Pre-show routine: Arrive on time for soundcheck to discover that the sound engineer hasn’t arrived, and sit around watching Otoboke Beaver clips on TikTok in the carpark. Soundcheck too quickly, not wishing to hold anyone up. Try not to be an inconvenience, and apologise for being there.
If we were powerful enough to have our diva demands listened to, we’d like a clean toilet for the severe IBS sufferer among us, not to be paid in beer we can’t drink, and not to be asked to turn the guitar down on stage. It’s not that diva–ish, but apparently, these are a lot to ask for!!
5. Where do you feel you fit into the music landscape?
We live by the rule that paying too much attention to what is going on in the wider music landscape is a bad idea, cos it can be tempting to start trying to sound like the current trend to gain popularity, and forget to do what you want to do. Living by this rule, we’ve managed to avoid being popular at all costs!!
Big Streaming has labelled us as ‘white noise’ but we couldn’t give a fuck, we’re not playing their game. For us, the place where music lives is community-led, grassroots spaces, alongside other weirdos and misfits. We found our spiritual home on the Crackedankles label – run by people who LOVE music and know what it’s like to be a musician, and have no interest in fucking us over or driving us into the ground to feed them “content”.
6: What are your favourite musical genres, and are there any you dislike?
We like Soundtracks – both original scores like Mika Levi’s work for Under The Skin, and Memorials’ work on Tramps!, and many others like Yann Tierson. Plus, the wonderful mixtapes of TV shows like Killing Eve and Yellowjackets, for example.
Can’t think of any genres we don’t like. Good music is good music, regardless of genre.
7. Is there a story behind your band’s name?
Let’s play two truths and a lie:
Steve has always been obsessed with television sets, the old CRT kind. He likes to conduct surgery on them to look at their insides, and make artwork out of them.
it stands for “Trevor and Veronica are fucking ace” because our mates Trevor and Veronica are fucking ace
It describes the face we all pull when lost in watching TV
8. What would you say is your greatest strength as a Band?
Being on the same wavelength so that we can take an idea for a song and knock it into a class A banger in 25 minutes.
9. What would you say is your greatest weakness as a band?
Once we’ve written that song in 25 mins, we will then continue to try and write it for 6 more weeks, only to realise that the first version was the best one. And we never learn from this mistake.
10. What can fans expect from your new single ‘BOOTS POCKET COFFIN’
Sexy, sexy, horror-pop vibes, a no-vocals chorus, yet by the end you won’t be able to forget what the song’s called.
11. What music artist would you say have influenced your work?
Other music artists don’t really influence us musically. Any good artist should take inspiration from everywhere, we’re influenced by TV shows, visual and experimental art, and each other. But we do find inspiration from the way some artists conduct themselves, like those who support other musicians rather than trying to compete with them, and those whose art is activism.
12. Who would you most like to collaborate with artistically?
There are lots of really amazing political artists at the moment like Bob Vylan, Lambrini Girls, Kneecap, benefits and Kae Tempest. Any or all of them!
13. What was your worst performance?
We once drove an hour and a half to play at a festival. When we arrived, we had to queue for 1.5 hours as there was no separate artist gate, meaning we arrived late for our set on an outdoor stage. Then, just before we were about to set up, torrential rain destroyed the stage, so we didn’t get to play. We loaded back in the van and headed home. The next day, sTeVe became seriously ill and was hospitalised for a week! So we missed our next festival performance and a recording session, putting us behind schedule for 3 months. Good times.
I: SHOT FROM BOTH SIDES
I: JAMES A MUMBY
14: What was the most difficult obstacle you have ever faced and how did you overcome it?
Lack of money. Being in a band is an expensive do.
We overcome this by doing pretty much everything ourselves. We’re our own little production company, from designing and screen printing our t-shirts, to recording our last album in our front room, to shooting and editing our own videos, to making all our own artwork, to getting our radio plays and magazine features. It’s all us. We’ve always done it this way.
We save every penny we make from merch sales, gigs, etc. This approach meant we could afford to record our forthcoming album ‘Wolf Rents Bark’ (out September 2025 on Crackedankles Records!!) at a great studio with a producer we really respect. It’s taken two years to raise the funds this way, but we did it, and it’s sounding better than we could imagine!!
15: What is your creative process when making music. Do you work with others or is there just you?
When it comes to writing, it’s just us in a room, wrestling songs into shape.
But this year, we worked with a producer for the first time to record our 2nd album (did we mention it’s out in September 2025??). He’s called Rob Whiteley and he’s a wizard with a studio in Liverpool. It was an incredible experience, because he gave us the opportunity to be as TV FACE as we could be, because we weren’t weren’t knob twiddling at the same time as guitar and stick twiddling. He gave us space to expand into, and it was pure joy.
16: Where do you see your musical career in 10 years?
We will have been replaced by bots, who will instantly give up, as there is no logical reason to what we do and it is not financially profitable.
17:Your Top 3 Overrated Musicians, who when you hear them you think ‘ How The Fk………….. ?
Our motto is: if you’ve got nowt nice to say, then say nowt.
Donald Trump is a piss-artist; he claims he’s the greatest, but we’ve seen better.
SEE TV FACE LIVE!
3RD MAY, CRACKEDANKLES WEEKEND, THE FERRET, PRESTON
6TH JUNE, SONIC BLOOM FESTIVAL, KANTEENA, LANCASTER8TH AUGUST, REBELLION FESTIVAL, WINTER GARDENS, BLACKPOOL
