Weekly Release Spotlight: TV On The Radio

Posted on 10/12/2008

TV On The Radio

Dear Science

[4AD/Interscope]

Fans and critics have called TV On The Radio's music soulful, but no one has ever said that the Brooklyn quintet writes soul music...until now. Dear Science, their third full-length, takes the haunting simplicity of 2004's scene-jolting debut Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes and the stormy barn-burners of 2006's Return to Cookie Mountain and smooths both over with thick slabs of golden butter, turning late-night paranoia-fueled freakouts into late-night dance-fueled freakouts. Whether it's revolution aspirations or revved-up perspiration you're looking for in your grooves, this record offers both up in spades.

Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra has been practicing this musical dichotomy of parties and politics for quite some time now, so it's fitting that TVOTR welcomes them aboard to blast their brass underneath Dave Sitek's signature guitar/synth atmospherics and the sexy cool croons of co-vocalists Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone. The once-brandishing of cut-up electronics and stilted loops in the listener's face becomes a more fluid and watery affair, as if wounds caused by frenzied honesty are now healing in the wake of a hopeful future. Of course not all negativity is lost, as part of looking forward is giving a big middle finger to the past, and the lyrics (rife with tears, sickness, and fear) fight to balance with the tuneful instrumentation.

In fact, falsetto and squirming muted guitar (not to mention a fair amount of smirking cheese) flies through the album's first two tracks before we feel any vehemence from Adebimpe and Malone on "Dancing Choose," proving that you can indeed dispense rhythm and wrath simultaneously ("DLZ" does so again later in the album with great effect). Even the pauses between the quakier numbers, such as the deeply somber "Family Tree" or the peppy-but-slight "Shout Me Out," quell to the point of magnificence, percolating soulfulness with heart-rending piano or manic programmed beats. Dear Science shows TVOTR rising up with the same passion and anger that got them noticed, but this time they're predicting more light than darkness, and that's when we all shall get funky.

TV On The Radio will be playing at the First Avenue Mainroom on October 20th and 21st, alongside The Dirtbombs.

Written by Chris Polley, Radio K volunteer and host of Now Like Photographs.