ARTSETC.
NY band encapsulates indie feel while infusing own flavor
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by Naomi Dehart
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
TV on the Radio is a Brooklyn-based band that is still emerging from the phase of being the fare of the Vespa-owning, vintage-donning, copiously caffeinated crowd. Even so, they're really not all that obscure, and signs show that any of their remaining anonymity will be wiped out by their stunning second album, Return to Cookie Mountain.
It's a seething work with a glam-rock, Radiohead vibe that eludes being pigeonholed like most of the efforts of the typical New York City art-rock bands of recent times.
However, their past does follow the standard template so many Indie bands share. The band's founding members met in New York City's East Williamsburg — a locale that houses more artists than anywhere else in North America and is pretty much the equivalent of what the Village was in the '50s and '60s. The founding member and guitarist, a self-taught painter by the name of David Sitek, met Tunde Adebimpe, the smooth but aggressive vocalist, in a shared warehouse loft. Tunde was then a NYU film student studying stop-frame animation.
To relieve the brutal tedium of his chosen field and pick up extra cash, he took up painting with Sitek. Pretty soon, the duo started experimenting with beat-boxing and swapping homemade four-track recordings. This evolved into gaining a local booking at a neighborhood bar and producing EPs that showed little promise. Nevertheless, with the addition of fellow Brooklyn residents Kyp Malone (their falsetto vocalist), Gerard Smith (the bassist) and Jaleel Bunton (on drums), the band gradually developed their distinctively indescribable sound.
Their eccentric vision and malicious lyrics have managed to garner the praise of the legendary David Bowie. In 2003, Sitek wandered over to Little Italy and sold Bowie's doorman a painting and a few recordings. Upon hearing the samples, Bowie was immediately a devotee. He has also become somewhat of a mentor, advising the band on how to deal with record company executives and what to do with their anti-Bush single, "Dry Drunk Emperor," that was recorded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Their new record is something to marvel at. Sitek is a seasoned veteran of the music scene, having done production work for The Liars and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and it was with decided certainty, and not a trace of angst, that he explained that he wanted to create music people will be listening to when the whole world burns up.
Accordingly, what the album most aptly brings to mind is the opening scene of "Apocalypse Now" — the stifled sound of a helicopter flying over an exploding air strike at sunrise set to the "The End" by The Doors. The album's lyrics echo a sorrowful, otherworldly war zone and call to mind the surreal aspect of a lot of the poetry and prose from the Vietnam War era. The lyrics do this without melodrama, though, and the end product is usually abstract but not unintelligible. The lines "Suddenly, all your history's ablaze/ Try to breathe as the world disintegrates" that Tunde, Kyp and guest Bowie sing on "Province," are delivered from any triteness by eerie vocals and dissonant harmonies set against a muted percussion.
The only forthright flaw of the band's second release is that the CD booklet and cover art are awful and unfortunately reminiscent of the work of a freshman art-schooler, hopped up on testosterone and using Photoshop for the first time. This isn't very easily overlooked coming from a band whose founding members were active in the New York City art scene, but it's not an uncommon feature of today's Indie scene. Anyway, the music they've constructed on this album is first-class, so something like that is nothing to get too caught up over.
Further, though the album has gained considerable acclaim, the band remains humble and self-effacing. "We're not super-intellectuals," Sitek protested in July's Village Voice. "It's not like TV on the Radio is doing something that's so avant-garde or new or cutting-edge or anything. It's just that so many people are not doing that."
