Since the release of their 2016 debut EP Total Fucker, TV Heads has been ripping through the LA music scene with their emotionally raw offerings steeped in post-punk riffs, delicately layered harmonies, and gritty electro weirdness.

The band is composed of Sean Galloway, Angelica Tavella, and Vince Gutierrez who rotate duties on lead vocals, guitars, synths, and drums.

Today TV Heads release their second album Devotional, via Oakland-based OIM Records, featuring Jessica Lankford (Spare Parts for Broken Hearts, Miserable) on drums. The Big Takeover is excited to host the premiere of this potent and absorbing LP.

Devotional explores deeply personal territory for the band, tenderly evoking a history marred by tragedy and loss, outlined over a stygian backdrop of occult, technology, and paranoia.

The result is a fitful, apocalyptic, and atmospheric dreamworld. Woven between the album’s swelling, oceanic synths and arcing guitar lines, the trio of gauzy harmonies drift in a dream-state, conjuring dystopian scenes of riot horses, television sounds, and parliamentary blood rituals. Throughout this darkness and trauma, an abiding thread of resilience persists.

Lead single “Ribbons” opens the album and is a highlight, filled with silky acoustic guitar lines, intertwining, reflective to shining harmonies, emotions held at bay, but many times breaking out on the chorus sections in a heartfelt swell, matched by the rising intensity of the instrumentation.

Kicky drum dynamics carry the more rock-oriented “It Takes A City,” while instrumentals “Prelude” and “Redux” glimmer with pulsating electronics.

“A Pale Horse” glides along at its start with delicate keyboard notes, subdued brushed drums, and hushed vocals, but gradually builds up to a more expansive post-rock sound, aiming skyward with airily rueful sighs.

The rock sound returns on “Pissing” that again starts off on a low-key tip with a mid-tempo pace, emphatic drum beat, occasional bass underline, and twisting keyboard notes – but then it bursts out mid-song with exciting rock guitar pyrotechnics.

The title track adds retro-rock opera to the band’s list of accomplishments, as it sways with an off-kilter rhythm, blending electronics and prog-rock dramatics. Album-ender “Cringer” continues with this thread of fiery rock guitar burn, but also intersperses the intensity with a calmer vibe of breathy vocals radiating outward like a soothing balm.

While Galloway and Tavella’s lyrics decry a sea of disconnection, they struggle against this detachment in search of the beauty that still exists between the broken lines.

To celebrate the release of Devotional, TV Heads will be playing a few select shows in LA and northern California:

1/25 – Los Angeles – HM157 (must RSVP via the Facebook event or by emailing herrneilson@gmail.com)

1/30 – Oakland – The Uptown

2/1 – Chico – Argus Bar

Listen to and order Devotional vinyl at TV Heads’ Bandcamp
OIM Records
Spotify

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