TV on the Radio: The Best Shot at Utopia

By Daniel Alleva

IOP, October 2008

Brooklyn’s TV on the Radio are back again with Dear Science, another exceptionally remarkable album that is the follow up to their previous record, Return to Cookie Mountain. Recorded between February and April at Staygold Studios in Brooklyn, Dear Science picks up where Return to Cookie Mountain left off – ducking and weaving to its right with a crisp and persistent exertion of body and mind. The payoff from a TV on the Radio record lies way beneath the instant gratification you receive from the initial spin. Dear Science’s first single “Golden Age” makes me want to roller skate around my living room today, as we head towards a transitional period in life: seasons, elections, and things of that nature. Singer Tunde Adebimpe says that, “It's pretty positive song. Kyp (Malone, vocals/guitar) said he was trying to write a utopian pop song, giving as much time to optimism as perhaps we as a band had collectively given to pessimism in the past - which I think is a good idea, making a conscious effort to give those feelings equal space.”

Return to Cookie Mountain was the perfect soundtrack to a purple and wounded December sky. Adebimpe describes the album as “foggy, pretty, and loud.” But when it came to the writing of Dear Science, he concedes that there really wasn’t much of a plan. “Kyp and I write demos - all voice for me. Him, usually just voice and guitar. And Dave (Sitek, production/vocals/guitar) has many beats, so we do a show and tell at the beginning of the allotted recording time, see what's interesting, and then work on those ones. The loose guideline was to make something different that moved in a different way from the last record.” The result is a lot of weary - if not punch drunk - emotion. Without question, each track on Dear Science is another shiny, blank canvas for the former painters turned songwriters to work on - and today’s listen of the album will surely not feel like tomorrow’s. How could it possibly? Like most TV on the Radio albums, Dear Science is a well that never runs dry - it creates the possibility in a dream future coming true, and it’s welcomingly available to the listener whenever they should arrive at it.

Critics will always fight the temptation to look at TV on the Radio under a magnifying glass, but any truly great band goes through this. I myself am brought back down to earth when I ask about the source of the overt sexuality found in TV on the Radio’s music. Adebimpe replies, “Mostly the genitals, hopefully by way of the heart and soul,” and I laugh, but mainly I’m laughing at my own build-up to the question, especially now that I’ve heard his answer to it. Rolling with the punches, I ask Adebimpe to describe what the title Dear Science really means, and this answer is equally as amusing as the last. “This record is our contribution to science,” he says “We are not degree holders or experts, but we are used to speaking with utter conviction concerning iffy hunches, bad ideas, and the straight up imaginary.” Fair enough. Adebimpe has given me the slip on the “serious music guy” questions, just like the marching band that slips out the backdoor on Dear Science’s final track, “Lovers Day.” Malone, who wrote the track, croaks "I wanna love ya/All the way off/I wanna break your back," and hearing that, I now gather that the answers missing to the out-loud wonders of sex and science are better searched for within the rhythms of the album itself. Talk, after all, is cheap. But great music like TV on the Radio’s is indeed priceless.

Much like Adebimpe’s wit and imagination. As two guys who have dwelled in Brooklyn a time or two again, I ask him what’s the very first thing that comes to mind when he reflects on TV on the Radio’s rise to fame in the billowing borough. “Rent,” he says flatly. I hear ya, brother. I really should have known that asking such socio-salacious questions was going to throw of my whole game here. And figuring that I might as well go out with a bang, I put forth the question to Adebimpe that if a DJ was to play TV on the Radio in his set, what would be the songs he’d like to hear before and after his band. “No songs. Just crickets, because they were here before us, and they'll probably be here after us - but bigger, probably. Like car-sized crickets. So, before us, just crickets, and after us, unbearably loud mega-crickets.” You see, now we’re on to something. We’re either just leaving, or about to be entering into, a true Golden Age. Degree holders and experts - cling to what you can. It’s about to get bumpy.