In a 2006 interview with Pitchfork Media, TV on the Radio guitarist Dave Sitek compared his band’s music to something as glamorous as smoking a cigarette. “I don’t mean that our music is going to give you cancer,” he added, but the image is clear enough – TV on the Radio has never thrived off of making particularly accessible music.
Sitek believes over time, however, the songs will find their own way to open themselves up to the listener. He’s exactly right – while the band’s strange combination of indie rock, soul, jazz, electronics, strings and horns might be off putting at first, there is something truly rewarding underneath.
Luckily for TVOTR, while not all of the songs on Dear Science will appeal to everyone, there are bound to be at least a couple standouts at the onset. Dear Science seamlessly transitions from horn-drenched funk (“Golden Age”) to heavily electronic ballads (“Love Dog”) to dark, raw power (“DLZ”). Once the listener finds the one song, one chorus, one lyric or one vocal tick he enjoys, the album will only open itself up from there.
And the unifying thread in all this is the voice of Tunde Adebimpe, the lead singer with an unconventional falsetto and the rare ability to convey the proper emotion for every track he sings. At first his vocals seem nothing more than a strange curiosity, but then, like everything else, his voice opens itself up. It might be a more obvious moment such as the rapid-fire quasi-rap of “Dancing Choose,” or something more subtle like the slight scream toward the climax of the incredible finale “Lover’s Day.”
So, once the band properly introduces itself, it becomes easier to get into the album as an entire unit. While there may be no track with the catchiness and immediacy of Return to Cookie Mountain’s “Wolf Like Me,” the sense of atmosphere present on Dear Science lends its songs the ability to leave lasting impressions in other ways.
There’s the ballad “Family Tree,” whose delay-laden piano chords provide memorable buildup to the string-soaked finale. There’s the weird combination of plucked strings, pre-programmed drums and backing vocal rhythms on “Stork and Owl.” And then there’s the aforementioned finale, “Lover’s Day,” which wastes no time in letting the saxophones and trumpets swell, pairing Adebimpe’s falsetto with guest vocals by Celebration’s Katrina Ford. The music gradually escalates, the vocals become more and more intense and emotional, and at the end, the listener is left with one of the best songs of 2008.
Occasionally there are very slight missteps, but these only come in the form of songs that aren’t quite as remarkable as the others. Maybe “Golden Age” is a bit too basic for a band that makes its name by avoiding pigeonholes, and maybe “Crying” overstays its welcome by 30 seconds or so, but in the grand scheme of the record, who’s counting?
TV on the Radio has returned from the critical success of Return to Cookie Mountain two years ago and moved outward, pushing the envelope further while expanding the elements of its sound that made the band so likable in the first place.
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RATING: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars
