TVAM announces new album ‘Ruins’, listen to lead single ‘The Words’

Photo credit: Debbie Ellis

TVAM returns with news of his new album, Ruins, which is due on 27 February via Invada Records. The follow-up to High Art Lite, Ruins is an album shaped by grief, reflection, and transformation; a record that captures both the weight of loss and the strange beauty that comes with it. Written after a self-imposed break from songwriting, it represents a shift in focus and perspective for Joseph Oxley. “I wanted to step away from what I thought I was supposed to make,” he explains. “The worst advice anyone can give you is, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ It’s always broken. It always needs fixing.”

At its core, Ruins explores loss not as emptiness but as presence, something that reshapes the world around you. The album finds Oxley wrestling with the dualities of human experience: the tension between what’s said and unsaid, between humanism and nihilism, public and private, despair and acceptance. “Hope and despair don’t cancel each other out,” he says. “They can co-exist — that’s what makes it feel real.”

Released today (12 November), lead single, “The Words,” introduces the world of Ruins with a sense of breathless movement and quiet intensity. “This was another which came early on in the sessions,” says Oxley. “I just had this guitar arpeggio which looped around again and again. It had a breathless quality to it, like it just kept moving, kept reaching for something. I started writing lyrics from the perspective of someone trying to find the last words they’d say to somebody – a completely impossible task. In some ways, words could never articulate the true depth of feeling in that moment. I kept the lyrics a bit lighter but kept the focus on the importance people place on these moments in time. I tried to bring it from the perspective of the willing listener; the one waiting for someone to vocalise a feeling they hope they share. It feels more true to the tone of the song and brings home the yearning for human connection.”

Somewhere within a lifetime of repeats, reruns, and reboots, TVAM lives, crafting work that touches on our memories while toying with our fears, creating a world in which broadcast becomes performance. Hypnotic tracks draw from a wide spectrum of influences Boards of Canada’s irresistible nostalgia, Suicide’s deconstructed rock’n’roll, and My Bloody Valentine’s infinite noise all converging in Oxley’s singular sound. Since his debut album Psychic Data burst from a small bedroom studio in Wigan, TVAM has defined the sound and spectacle of nostalgia’s grip on modern life, from the sloganeering of “Porsche Majeure” to the electioneering of “Semantics,” his music has gained daytime playlisting on BBC 6 Music and has been featured on TV including groundbreaking series Succession.

Musically, Ruins is expansive and immersive. Dark but magical, it is filled with reverb-drenched synths, fractured textures, and hammer-blow snares. Guitars weave through the mix with a newfound restraint, creating space for atmosphere and emotion to take centre stage. “Broken reality” textures collide with driving rhythms, recalling the cinematic pulse of Floodland-era The Sisters of Mercy, and the melodic melancholy of Disintegration-era The Cure. The result is a record that finds beauty in dissonance and light in the wreckage.

TVAM 2026 Tour Dates

Feb 26 – LIVERPOOL – District

Feb 27 – GLASGOW – Nice ‘n’ Sleazy

Feb 28 – NEWCASTLE – The Common Room

Mar 03 – LEEDS – Hyde Park Book Club

Mar 04 – BIRMINGHAM – The Hare & Hounds

Mar 05 – CARDIFF – Clwb Ifor Bach

Mar 06 – BRISTOL – Strange Brew

Mar 07 – MANCHESTER – Soup

Mar 10 – BRIGHTON – The Hope & Ruin

Mar 11 – LONDON – The Lower Third

Mar 12 – CAMBRIDGE – The Portland Arms

Mar 20 – RAMSGATE – Ramsgate Music Hall