New music review with singles from The Family Battenberg and TVOD
- Julia Mason aka The Decibel Decoder
- 17 hours ago
- 4 min read
Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her new music review with singles from The Family Battenberg Bed Bug and TVOD Meetings
Artist: The Family Battenberg
Track: Bed Bug
When all’s said and done, there are few things more instantly gratifying in rock music than stomping on the fuzz pedals, cranking up the dials and letting fat-ass garage riffs scream in your face. Cardiff-based quartet The Family Battenberg knows this well, channeling the fun and freedoms of stomping garage rock on forthcoming debut album Super Deluxe, due for release on 20 November via Stolen Body Records.
Distilling the band back down to its ramalama essence via reference points of The Stooges, The White Stripes, T-Rex, and early AC/DC, Super Deluxe wildly captures the raggedy chaos of the Battenberg live experience, warts ‘n’ all. Tracked live across a whirlwind 7 day session with producer Tom Rees (former frontman of Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard) the band took this philosophy to the extremes, limiting the instrumentation to exactly what the band play with live, choosing everyone’s ‘shittier’ takes for the final edit, hacking away at tracks to get straight to the action.
The Family Battenberg's touring schedule has been comprehensive and relentless: "weekends we didn't have a gig we'd feel guilty because we thought we'd turned one down", guitarist/vocalist Ethan Duck remembers. In their brief but burning career to date, there’s been sold-out headlines on UK runs, tours with Gruff Rhys, Panic Shack, and longtime friends Getdown Services (Ben Sadler from the duo comes appropriately dressed as Elvis for the album’s cover); and slots at practically every showcase festival going, from SXSW in Texas and Eurosonic in Groningen, to Reeperbahn in Hamburg and The Great Escape in Brighton.
Marking the album announcement, the band share raucous new single Bed Bug. Imagining romantic obsessions that might occur when indeed the bed bugs do bite, the track is front-loaded with snarling riffs and zipping glam solos, riding raunchy and free towards good-time glory. Speaking more about the track, the band say: “A lot of our songs sound like they’re about shagging, but aren’t, except this one sort of is. Bed Bug is about mites. How would a bed bug feel about getting obsessed with the person in the bed?
“We wrote it in a tent backstage at a festival in Orléans that we’d turned up three hours to early too because none of us speak French, demo’ing it there and then with no amps, and Billy hitting a guitar case for percussion. Even then we knew we wanted it to sound big. We’d spent nine months of 2025 not coming up with any new songs we were happy with, but this one thankfully broke our streak, and came to define the outlook of the new record."
* * *
Artist: TVOD
Track: Meetings
Brooklyn based rockers, TVOD have today released a new single, Meetings from their forthcoming second album, The Farm, due out 16 October on Mothland. Lifted by a superabundance of catchy guitar lines atop a motorik rhythm section, the song explores themes of obsessive emotional distress, self-destructive coping mechanisms, and the existential numbness that follows the end of a relationship. Frontman, Tyler Wright says "The song is an ode to trying to numb your heart with the whiskey bottle and drunk drive your older brother’s F-150 into a moving body of water to prove a point. Take that Stacey. You ruined me."
For the music video, the group stopped by a farm in Chemillé-en-Anjou, Pays de la Loire, France during their Summer tour to shoot “typical” rock band shenanigans.
Less than a year after the release of their debut album, Party Time, TVOD were back in the studio, this time in Leeds, recording their second full-length with producer, Danny Blackburn of Adult DVD. The new album finds the band pushing their sound further without losing any of the raw nerve, crooked charm, and volatility that has already embedded them in the heart of the underground. With The Farm, TVOD further polish their sharp, danceable brand of post-punk driving basslines, punchy drums, and angular guitars with vocals that feel both detached and urgent. Drawing from underground influences while keeping a modern edge, these songs are gritty yet catchy, perfect for crowded venues and late-night sets. The album is propelled by a restless momentum, all the while reflecting the creative chaos of Brooklyn’s distinctive music scene.
At first glance, The Farm offers an idyllic escape - relief from the disillusionment and apathy entrenched in the American political and social landscape. But a closer look reveals that things aren’t as serene as they may seem. Written partly on a farm in Neufchâtel-en-Bray, France, the album draws parallel to a satirical commandment from George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” To that effect, the album explores themes with regards to power, hypocrisy, and a society that feels increasingly absurd, TVOD poking fun at authority while capturing anger, tension, and the collective unease of today. As social contracts collapse and human tenacity becomes commodified, city dwellers long for a simpler, rural lifestyle, only to find that the rot has spread even to the furthest reaches of modern life.
The album was recorded by Danny Blackburn (Adult DVD) at Nave Studios (Leeds, UK); Tyler Wright (singer-songwriter), Jenna Mark (synth, vocals), Mem Pahl (drums, piano, percussion), Denim Casimir (guitar, vocals), Serge Zbrizher (guitar), and Micki Piccirillo (bass), performing their punkified rock & roll scorchers in the span of two weeks. The album artwork shows a 12”x12” diorama crafted by Wright on his kitchen table that conjures up a disturbing scene from Orwell's 1945 dystopian allegorical novella.
TVOD Live Dates
August
26 - Norwich, UK @ Voodoo Daddy's
27 - Glasgow, UK @ The Hug & Pint
28 - Northamptonshire, UK @ Shambala Festival
29 - Cumbria, UK @ Krankenhaus Festival
30 - Manchester, UK @ Castle Hotel
September
1 - Bristol, UK @ The Lanes
2 - London, UK @ Third Man Records
8 - Lyon, FR @ Le Sonic
9 - Nantes, FR @ Le Ferrailleur
10 - Lorient, FR @ Hydrophone
12 - Orléans, FR @ Hop Hop Hop Festival
13 - Leffinge, BE @ Leffingeleuren Festival
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