Stole away into the night;
Heaven scent, this air still heavy.
Found a way, seep inside;
Forever now, but I’m not ready.
There’s a particular charge to the air that only exists in halls built for belief — where every sound arrives already doubled, already haunted by its own echo. Churches were built to hone sound and light, which is why they make such perfect venues: vaulted ceilings that lift a voice into something near-choral, hard surfaces that let drums bloom and travel, candlelight and stained glass that turn darkness into design. And a concert isn’t far from a service: people gather for communion of a different kind, moving as one, answering the same refrain, turning private ache into something shared. That’s the atmosphere TVAM steps into with “Powder Blue”, the second single from Ruins, the forthcoming third album by the Joe (Joseph) Oxley-helmed solo-project from the Greater Manchester area.
Here, Oxley’s signature machinery remains — brooding, bolted-down textures and rhythms that feel engineered rather than played — but the song lands with immediate grip: vocals, guitar, keys, and atmospheric drums arriving like a ritualistic mass. Produced and recorded by TVAM, and mixed and mastered by James Trevascus (Nick Cave, The KVB, Clint Mansell), “Powder Blue” folds alt-rock, coldwave, and post-punk into cathedral-scale sighs and Jesus and Mary Chain-esque swagger, pinned in place by an 80s-sized guitar riff. Midway through, the bass blooms into a brooding voltage-swell, stacking tension until the song feels tight, pressurized, and alive.
Lyrically, “Powder Blue” treats obsession like a timeline you can’t stop scrubbing forward — fast-forwarding through the fallout before it even arrives. “The song is all about obsession and attraction – seeing how the act of that obsession would play out before it actually happens,” Oxley says. “It jumps ahead to feelings of being trapped in a relationship, then the fear of not being trapped… It accepts that sometimes things are inevitable.”
Fittingly, the video keeps things elemental: a performance captured inside a church under a teal-blue wash, fog rolling through the nave and candles marking the altar like a low-lit boundary line. The camera moves between scale and closeness — Oxley silhouetted at the mic in haze, blown-out flares that turn the vocal into pure nerve, sharp-angled instrument shots, and tight hands-on-keys detail — the stage as confessional, the room as amplifier.
Watch the video for “Powder Blue” below:
The follow-up to High Art Lite (2022), TVAM’s forthcoming LP Ruins is shaped by grief, reflection, and transformation — a record that frames loss not as emptiness, but as presence: something that rearranges the world around you. Oxley describes it in dualities — what’s said and unsaid, 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.”
Somewhere within a lifetime of repeats, reruns, and reboots, TVAM lives — building a world where broadcast becomes performance. The work draws from a wide spectrum: Boards of Canada’s nostalgia pull, Suicide’s deconstructed rock’n’roll, and My Bloody Valentine’s infinite noise converging in Oxley’s singular signal. Since Psychic Data first burst from a small bedroom studio in Wigan, TVAM has earned daytime playlisting on BBC 6 Music and has been featured on TV, including Succession.
Musically, Ruins is expansive and immersive — reverb-drenched synths, fractured textures, hammer-blow snares, and guitars with a newfound restraint, leaving space for atmosphere and emotion to take centre stage. “Broken reality” textures collide with driving rhythms, nodding toward the cinematic sweep of Floodland-era The Sisters of Mercy and the bruised romance of Disintegration-era The Cure — beauty in dissonance, light in the wreckage.
Ruins is out on February 27th, 2026, via Invada Records. Listen to “Powder Blue” here, pre-order Ruins here.
TVAM will take Ruins on the road in early 2026 with a UK tour beginning February 26 in Liverpool, followed by dates in Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, and Manchester. The run continues through Brighton, London, Cambridge, and concludes in Ramsgate on March 20. Support across the tour comes from The Sick Man of Europe, Marina Zispin, Those Holy, Maria Uzor, and Massive Luxury Overdose, with each bill tailored to the city (see tour poster below).
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
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The post Heaven Scent, The Rain Pours Down — Manchester Post-Punk Project TVAM Shares Cathedral-esque Video for “Powder Blue” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
