One of the most striking
things about TV On The Radio's 2006 opus Return To Cookie Mountain was one of its very first
sounds: a mysterious sample that could have been a warped orchestral blast, the
mellifluous din of a building collapse, or the mating call of a brontosaurus.
That sound set the tone for a hurricane of an album whose mystery was made to
unravel over the span of a hundred listens. Its subtlety came, almost
incongruously, from an overabundance of great ideas, rather than the refinement
of one in particular. On Dear Science, TVOTR finds a more traditional consistency,
transmuting that dirty experimentalism into a lush cleanliness that
eases—rather than hurls—its songs into the art-making ether.
It's a turnoff at first,
but beauty becomes this band, whether it's the bare-bones sort (as on 2003's Young
Liars EP)
or as expansive as Dear Science. "Halfway Home" opens the disc with the packed-in
punk of the Cookie Mountain single "Wolf Like Me," but soon evolves into a
taut, glassy piece of Peter Gabriel bigness. The breezy exhale of "Crying"
stands atop a tightly edited drum loop and well-placed curlicues of guitar and
horn. On "Dancing Choose," Tunde Adebimpe raps in a frantic jag, but lets up to
give way to an even-keeled chorus. It's as if TVOTR (or in-band producer David
Sitek) has learned to compartmentalize its myriad bits: The grit and pulse come
from Afrobeat flourishes and percussion that pops ("Golden Age," "Red Dress");
the epic overtones arrive on swells of strings or washes of guitar ("Stork
& Owl," "Family Tree"); and the fantastic complementary croons of Adebimpe
and Kyp Malone finally stand at the forefront of the songs.
Organized chaos is a
wonderful thing unto itself, but there's much to be said for simply pretty, and
TV On The Radio says it here. Even so, if Cookie Mountain was a cyclone, Dear
Science
is the eye, and something truly nasty waits on the other side.