TV On The Radio, Return To Cookie Mountain (4AD/Interscope) 10-
Seeing TV On The Radio live the other day for the third time, I'm convinced that they are one of the best live bands in the world right now. First of all, Tunde Adebimpe is a shit-hot firebreathing dynamo of a performer, stalking the stage like he's going to explode, wailing like a true soul shouter. It's like he's possessed by the spirit of Otis Redding, who's pissed off that the world's gone to hell since he died in 1967, but also in ecstasy to be on stage to vent about it in this energetic young body. Within five minutes from the start, there isn't a single audience member who isn't thoroughly convinced that this man is feeling the music, deeply. One would expect Dave Sitek, the band's main musical architect, to be sitting behind a bank of computers, tweaking his audio collages and pushing up his glasses. Instead, he's running around with a guitar like a madman, furiously strumming punk rock style, with less technique than Johnny Ramone. He knows that the fussy details work for recordings, but live he's got to rock. Rather than just keeping a beat, the rhythm section changes it up to keep you on your toes. Jaleel Bunton reveals his jazz chops when the bottom drops out and he hunches over and spews out some crazy rhythms distorted with various pedals and toys. Gerard Smith's nimble, diverse repertoire shows he could be comfortable freaking out with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Underneath the massive afro and beard is Kyp Malone, the anchor holding down the maelstrom, contributing his sweet falsettoes and complex guitar textures. By the end of last song of the night, "Let The Devil In," with openers Grizzly Bear doing the Hope Snake Dance and shaking percussion instruments, the audience was screaming and pleading for more. Had they played just one more, like "Ambulance," no one would leave. TV On The Radio had us in their paws. After they left, the audienced echoed the "whoa whoa" chorus from the song, just as I once expected proper audiences to do after hearing U2's Under A Blood Red Sky before actually having been to a proper rock show.
Not that TV On The Radio are a proper rock band. They may put on sublime, transcendent shows, but their records are confounding and subversive. Sacrificing groove and emoting, their recordings subvert and defy expectations. While there was some slight disappointment that the first full-length, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (2004) didn't quite deliver on the promise of the absolutely cracking Young Liars EP (2003), Return To Cookie Mountain is hardly more extroverted or crowd-pleasing. While he's a brilliant front man live, Adebimpe's vocals are not given a chance to shine, but remain embedded in choruses and harmonies. It's obviously a conscious choice to sublimate individual performance for the good of the collective. And it works. Return To Cookie Mountain is their best album, with a more assured, cohesive aesthetic vision that can't be succinctly described or attributed to any particular influences. TV On The Radio are more stunningly original than ever. They simply sound like no one else. For one to get any sort of handle on them without first hearing the album a dozen times, I can only suggest that in spirit, if not sound, it evokes David Bowie's (who as a fan and a gentleman, contributed vocals to "Province,") Scary Monsters, when Robert Fripp contributed some startlingly unsettling guitar parts that made the songs sound decidedly dark and off-kilter. Or think of Tricky, who abandoned Maxinquaye's lucscious melodies for a more claustrophobic, apocalyptic feel in Pre-Millenium Tension.
"I Was A Lover" starts off an appropriately evocative line, "I was a lover, before this war," adorned with wheezing, multilayered synthesized guitars and horns that deftly triggers the melancholy button, underscored by furniture-shaking dub bass. It's a remarkable sound, something between an orchestra an the mournful bellow of a colossal and long-extinct mammal. One might think the lyrics enter into a pointed rant against war and our betrayal to our fellow critters. But there will be no pointed, topical political critiques here. The band certainly has strong opinions. Hear 2005's online-only Hurricane Katrina protest song, "Dry Drunk Emperor." But their lyrics here consist more of startling imagery ("My clone wears a brown shirt, and I seduce it when no one is around / Mano y mano, on a bed of nails"), oblique metaphors and stern allegories ("We're busy tempting, like fate's on the nod . . . And it's been even longer since our plastic priest class / Had a goddamned thing to say") than calls to action. "Hours" and "Province" are slow burners, hooks and catchy melodies eschewed for vocal harmonies sung to slow marching rhythms. The deceptive spareness of "Hours" (put on headphones and you'll hear an uncredited baritone saxophone) blossoms on "Province" with more ornate choruses, aided by Bowie, and chiming guitars and piano. The sentiments are simple but beautifuly put - "Hold these hearts courageously / As we walk into this dark place / Stand steadfast beside me and see / That love is the province of the brave."
"Playhouses" is the most direct song, addressing the dissolution of a relationship caused by addiction. It's driven by some frantic, layered percussion. You don't know how much it contributes until it's suspended for the refrain, "Playhouses / Haunted by / Broken spirits / Just trying to get high," before it kicks in again to exhilerating effect. The energy level reaches a peak with "Wolf Like Me," the most kicking song on the album. Here all the helpless ennui and indignation expressed so far boils over and howls to reclaim freedom and passion ("My heart's aflame / My body's strained but god I like it"). Like the last album's "Wear You Out," they get a little kinky. "Charge me your day rate / I'll turn you out in kind / When the moon is round and full / Gonna teach you tricks that'll blow your / Mongrel mind." Another brilliantly executed break highlights the stanza, "Dream me oh dreamer / Down to the floor / Open my hands and let them / Weave onto yours." "A Method" is stripped down to just clanging percussion and sensitive vocals, providing a nice lead in to the rhythmically similar "Let The Devil In," which sounds damned anthemic. "Beg the bee's forgiveness as it's falling from your sleeve / Watch its guts pump poison into sting / Watch it reach completeness, see it fall asleep / Legs above fold in eternal dream." Then the seven-strong chorus joins in to stirring effect. It turns out of course that we as a nation are the bees, attacking others to a suicidal end. "Blues From Down Here" is prickly and challenging, a slightly artier departure worth chewing on.
The album begins to wind down with "Tonight," which recalls the lovely, meditative drone of "Blind" from their first EP. By the end, Sitek's samples and glitchy electronics glisten and sparkle. "Wash The Day" brings the album to a satisfyingly heavy conclusion, with colossal humming guitars and psychedelic electric sitar. The "little flightless metal birds / high above in limbless tree" ominously evoke 9/11, where the "Grey cascades in foreign waves / Wash the day away." Okay, so it concludes with more dread than hope, yet it doesn't feel like the end. It feels almost celebratory when they sing lines like "Making out so high in the backseat of a car-bomb under carcinogenic sun," and "Lay your malady at the mouth of the death machine." Nightmarish, Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard-like visions as they are, they're going to defiantly live out their lives in the face of them. In Super Mario Brothers, Cookie Mountain is only the third of seven levels. It's a tantalizing hint that TV On the Radio have only just gotten started. And with their unique sound and haunting, almost chant-like hymns, they've already created a new gospel for the 21st century. Imagine what they could do on the next four albums.
