TV On The Radio’s Dear Science
by 
|It was a privilege being able to sit down and listen to TV On The Radio’s album Dear Science from start to finish. An added bonus was the fact that I’ve been in the America for a month — the album sums up the atmosphere I have witnessed in the US: tension, money, a bigger gap between rich and poor than I’ve ever seen, a never ending far away war, and some vague hints at political hope. From the inset, TV On The Radio get bad ass on you, combining their trademark layers of barber shop vocals with criss-crossing handclaps over doomsday synth pads and screaming guitars on Halfway Home, which is like a grown up cousin of Wolf Like Me from their 2006 LP Cookie Mountain, easing you into the fact that beyond this point they are going to erase everything you thought you knew about TVOTR. But you should have expected that anyway.
Surprises! Horns! (by New York afro beat crew Antibalas) and bubbling and skanking guitars surface their heads. It’s like they couldn’t keep their funk at bay any more, and it is a welcome surprise.
Crying, Golden Age and almost half of the album seem to hark to Prince, Bowie’s ‘Station to Station’ and even Peter Gabriel, with stuttering head nod beats and understated bass lines.
They have hit their stride lyrically and sonically, fading out their self-conscious wall of delayed guitars and noise, trading them in for rich strings, keeping the textures they have always had but using them to full effect.
Stork & Owl (respect for the ampersand) is a true tear jerker, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone weaving a strange fairy tale metaphor over a rolling crunk like beat with layers of plucked and bowed strings.
Producer and band member Dave Sitek has proven himself to be the genius we all thought he was, after the slight diversion of his production on Scarlett Johansson’s dissapointing ‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’ (but hey everyone’s gotta get paid).
He combines drum machines and programmed beats and synths with live instrumentation, layering without overcomplicating, adding gradually — particularly on the slower ballads: Love Dog reaching the similar ecstatic points of Bjorks Joga, with an outro of a filtered cascading beat playing across epic strings.
Maybe he has laid off the weed a little — ’sitting in my underwear doing bong hits is how I get a mix to gel’ (from an interview with Remix magazine). Or maybe he hit it harder?
Every song has it’s won merit.
It cements the fact that TVOTR have made a focused, funky, emotional, complex album, a struggle between doom and hope, at once experimental and avant garde but also managing to be Pop.
I wish I was still here to see them at The Brooklyn Masonic Temple in October. But I have to wait until they come to Australia.
Tagged: Brooklyn bands, pop music
- 3
- 0
RELATED
The Management before they were MGMT
Who would have thought that an abbreviation could make such a difference? This track is from the older, and in my opinion, better The Management, before they went by the name, MGMT.
We’re big fans of French duo Cocoon, so we spoke to frontman Marc Daumail to prove it. Ahead of their upcoming tour of Australia in November, we asked him how vibrant the French music scene is right now: ‘It’s such a relief to be considered like a real band singing in English in a country like France, which is very conservative about its music traditions. We know Moriarty and The Do. They are nice. We all worked a lot to make this scene exist’. Which folk acts have most excited you recently? ‘My albums of the year are not very folky: Grizzly Bear, Lee Fields, The XX. But The Tallest Man On Earth just made one of the best folk albums of all time’. Read Cocoon’s Secret Playlist.
Hypernova video, directed by Richard Patterson
Brooklyn-band Hypernova’s new music video was shot and directed by Common Machine’s Director of Photography, Richard Patterson, on Profoto’s spanking new, lighting packs, enabling the video to be shot on a stills camera. There are actually more than 16,000 stills that make up the video, the first time it’s ever been done like this.
Also by JAI PYNE
The aesthetics of Lightspeed Champion
As head honcho of my band The Paper Scissors, I am in charge of many things both musical and menial, and then also the aesthetic and web aspects — artwork, blogs, and the whole identity of the band. Bands these days have to offer more than just a product, a CD, a clip and then a live show. There are people that have really embraced the change of the industry, not just the over talked MP3 killing the record industry debate, but the interactivity and dialogue that artists now have with their audience, through the web. One artist who I discovered recently and who epitomizes this is Lightspeed Champion, the solo project of Devonte Haynes, an English singer-songwriter. He plays very melodic pop with elaborate arrangements — Elton John meets Fleetwood Mac with a Jarvis Cocker-like vocal twang. Read more
YOU'RE SAYING (0)
No comments yet.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Well, it seems I’ve been in a vacuum of art since the spring. And now, its just a week or so out from the upcoming Young Blood exhibit, which features my paintings and opens at the Opera Gallery in New York. I find myself feeling both excited and nervous at the thought that this show is just around the corner. These past few months have seemed like one of the great feats of my lifetime. I have been working for five months on these two upcoming shows, immersed deeply in the studio, being on a complete mission to create what will be my debut show in Manhattan alongside a handful of other rising international artists. I would wake at once at 4:30 in the morning, to a strict regimen of coffee by five, and paint through the sunny summer days into late in the evening to complete these works. Read more
When you first hear William Elliot Whitmore’s voice, it’s hard to believe he isn’t a grizzled old man. The baritone-voiced one-man-band does rousing bar room ballads on the banjo and guitar that are sure to send shivers down your spine. On closer listen, Whitmore’s voice does seem slightly affected. But like Tom Waits before him, his voice is likely to age like a good scotch.
Listen to the William Wlliot Whitemore track, Dry.
Katy Smail’s illustrations are kind of like candy floss sticking to wind blown lips — sweet, tempting, yet always just a little bit out of reach. Read more
Each room in Copenhagen’s Hotel Fox is an individual piece of art. 21 international artists descended on the hotel to turn each of the 61 rooms into a unique space, featuring creative artwork ranging from Japanese manga to fluid graphic design. Read more
I don’t get Flight of The Concords. I just don’t find it funny. I also don’t get most comedy these days. It’s so derivative and clichéd. Everyone wants the same laughs. I like comedy that pushes the boundaries in strange ways. Fonejack is one underground unit that have had me rolling around on the floor with their real life skits. Read more
Can you ever really get sick of red plaid pants? Geography defying brand, Mjolk certainly doesn’t think so and looking at their Autumn/Winter ‘08 collection, it’s hard not to agree. Read more
No one disputes that the Bush Administration is no friend to civil liberties, but this little spot on the ACLU website smacks of paranoia. At least it’s entertaining, and some people might actually welcome the ultra-convenient vision of the future this piece of propaganda offers.
WE'RE RESPECTING
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Italian-born, New York City-based photographer Paolo Ventura creates fairy-tale like pictures out of amazingly constructed, miniature dioramas that almost trick the eye into thinking he’s a tilt-shift photographer. Read more
Our celebrity-saturated culture makes many of us irrationally hateful of the faces we see on our TV screens and magazine pages. Good thing there’s Celebrity PunchOut to let off some of that steam.
I live the upbeat, feel good tempo of the new single — A Hundred Hearts — from Philly group, The Swimmers. Off their latest album, People Are Soft, this song is a strangely fitting anthem for the blustery day outside.
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
Check out Mike Stimpson’s Lego reinterpretations of classic photographs. Stimpson’s version of Malcolm Browne’s iconic 1963 photograph of the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc is particularly twisted. Read more
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
The knuckle sandwich charm necklace by This Charming Man features two pieces of bread on either side of a tiny set of brass knuckle dusters. Rad huh? Get yours now for $140. Read more
FOLLOW US
DISCOVER MORE
SO...
SEARCH: Can't find what you're looking for? Do a search..
IS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?
We hope you're enjoying your time on Lost At E Minor, but it’s not over yet. Got something to share? Tell us about it and we'll look to publish it. If you want to have your work featured on the site, we'd love to hear from you. Pssst, we also have an online store stocking some of the goodies we feature on the site.
If you're a media agency and want to use this platform to connect with our readership, then drop us a line and tell us about it. Oh yeah, and we do digital consulting for cool brands that want to reach the sort of demographic that visits this site.
