TV On The Radio is a band
of ideas. Its five multi-instrumentalist producers spread their vision across a
handful of media (sound, paint, celluloid, clay), and flout the "too many
chefs in the kitchen" rubric by releasing great records. Where Cookie Mountain was an
abrupt, resounding "Eureka!", Dear Science is as well-considered as
the epistle its title suggests. And just as TV On The Radio is mastering its
own beautiful chaos, its lyricists continue their war-damaged, lovelorn,
imagery-heavy battle against the encroaching disorder of the Information Age. TVOTR vocalist Tunde
Adebimpe recently spoke to The A.V. Club about the delicate nature of collaboration, and space madness.
The A.V. Club: You've recorded an album's worth
of material with Antibalas and company. Is Dear Science that album?
Tunde Adebimpe: The thing about Dave's
studio [StayGold, owned by TVOTR member David Sitek]… it's a little noise
factory. There are songs sitting around on hard drives everywhere. There
probably is an album's worth of material recorded with Antibalas, but Dear
Science
isn't it. We started this one with about 32 new songs that we had to whittle
down and then build back up. In the process, they end up sounding more
Afrobeat, or more stripped-down… It's a song-by-song kind of intuition. But I
definitely know that when we started recording this album, everyone wanted to
make the closest thing we could to a dance record, something a bit more
percussive.
AVC: Cookie Mountain felt like an artistic
hurricane. By contrast, Dear Science feels, not reserved, but…
TA: More regular?
AVC: Exactly.
TA: [Laughs.] The recording of Cookie Mountain is something that none of
us really wanted to experience over again, let alone accidentally repeat. Doing
so probably would have resulted in the band breaking up, or one of us causing
another grievous bodily harm.
AVC: Why is that?
TA: It was just a really dark place. I'm glad that
record exists, but it was kind of like the Ren & Stimpy episode where they get
space madness, and they're orbiting the planet, ready to kill each other for a
bar of soap. Coming home after touring, we had to be like, "Guys, remember how
we actually liked each other? Let's do that again, and make something that
comes out of that." Which is what Dear Science is.
AVC: How did you change the process to make it
more enjoyable, or tap into liking each other?
TA: It wasn't a therapy session or anything. We just
realized we'd have the same problems with any joint artistic endeavor. At the
beginning, there's a nervousness—a heightened sensitivity—because
you don't know what you're going to make. With Cookie Mountain, one person would say
something, and somebody else would disappear for four days. He'd have to go
walk the earth or sit depressed on a pier because he couldn't just say, "I
disagree with you." With Dear Science, we all tried to keep in mind a kind of loving
fast-forward button, where you're like, "This isn't really important right now, so
let's just skip to the part where you realize no one is trying to hurt you."
AVC: What does Dear Science mean as a title?
TA: It's about the questionable faith that we put in
science. You know, we're allegedly able to live longer because of scientific
advancement, but we're doing so in a world that might be getting hurt in the
process. Or it's thinking about how quickly vessels for communication have
progressed, but how genuine communication on a host of things that are still
marring the human race hasn't advanced. Like the most effective way to resolve
a conflict is still to kill someone, apparently. Or these scientists who are
working on making a self-contained black hole—how short is that victory
party going to be? And how quickly is someone going to turn that to the worst
application? It's like, "We made a black hole!" "Oh cool, can we watch sex on it?"
"No, not really." "Can we kill someone with it?" "Probably."
AVC: Do you and guitarist-vocalist Kyp Malone work together to
create a sense of lyrical cohesion, or does that happen naturally?
TA: No, that's definitely on its own. We don't even
ask each other what our lyrics mean. I don't know if it's just from spending so
much time around each other, but even when we've been apart, we come back with
this thing that we're collectively writing about. If you run down through all
the lyrics of Dear Science, all these things keep cycling around: diamonds,
dogs, dust, gold, light… Of course, that could just be our limited vocabulary.
[Laughs.] Maybe it's because we're both Pisces, born a day apart.
AVC: "Family Tree" seems particularly poignant.
What inspired that song?
TA: I've been in situations, and known people in
situations, where someone's pure affection was unfortunately affected by
outside sources. The terrain of a person's heart really isn't under the
jurisdiction of anybody but that person, and in that song, it's an older
generation condemning a relationship between two people for reasons that they
probably had to deal with when they were younger. Like, "Well, when I was your
age, I fell in love with so-and-so, and that was nothing but hell for me…" The "old
idea" in the lyrics is bigotry, which could relate to race, to gender, to
sexuality… People have their reasons for doing that, but it makes for such a
waste of what could be a really short life.
AVC: Your lyrics regarding love seem more
inspired by the pitfalls than the triumphs. In "Shout Me Out," you call
yourself a masochist. Do you feel that way when it comes to love?
TA: I guess I've only really sat down to write about
that stuff when it's not going so great—I actually don't want to do that
anymore. [Laughs.] The line in that song is about having worn that face, and
thinking it was valid, but then realizing that you don't want to beat it [into
the ground]. It's not really accurate to mine one emotion. Then again, when I'm
in the mode of feeling positive about love, I don't really feel the need to
mark it down in song. In fact, I know what that song would sound like, and I
would not subject anybody to that.
AVC: Adam Drucker [mastermind of Oakland band
Subtle] recently mentioned that something may be brewing between the two of you
and Mike Patton. What can you say about that?
TA: What I can say is that the three of us are indeed
working on a project that I'm thinking will congeal toward the end of the year.
It came from an idea that Adam had, to have the three of us basically mess
around vocally and see what comes of it. That's as much as I can say, but I'm
psyched about it. It's going to be so fun.
AVC: Kyp's song "Lovers Day" ends the album
passionately. Was this a conscious decision—to close with an almost
literal climax?
TA: [In mock defeat.] Oh. Yeah… that. I guess it
was. I am not
going to sing that song with him on the stage—it's just not something you
do with a friend. [Laughs.] No, I think that's a great song, and the ending of
it is an acoustic climax as well—a climax for the ear.