I Ate My DVD Collection

What? Me, get sidetracked? Me, forget about my own blog? Yeah, well, yo mama’s so forgetful, she…well, I’m bad at coming up with those jokes.  Anyway, the point is, I’m a little mad at myself for my being lax with this blog, and I think I’ll be doing more of it from now on.  The obvious choice for the beginning of my revival is the new album by my boys, TV On The Radio.  Their birthday present to me (hey, it did come out the right week) was at first titled Dear Science,, but they did drop their comma, apparently because it complicated sentences like this.  But after Dear Science, I’m not quite sure what to review.  I’m positive I’m going to have one more review out of stuff I watched/listened to over fall break, which I spent in absentia in Dallas, but I’m not sure what it should be.  Should I find some new music to review that I’ve been getting into, like London Zoo by the Bug or Los Angeles by Flying Lotus, or should I review one of the movies I saw (Choke or W.), or something else?  I’m going to use the poll feature that I just discovered to see if I can leave it up to you yabbos, as Menick would say.

Dear Science may wind up as my favorite album of the year, and even so it’s a little disappointing.  That’s just a function of the ludicrous expectations an album like Return to Cookie Mountain creates, especially when it’s just the second album by a band, especially a dynamic band like TV On The Radio.  I think that a lot of die-hard fans like myself have reacted like myself – initial shock and ambivalence, followed by a gradual warming.  This is not an album like TV’s first two, but then, Return to Cookie Mountain wasn’t like Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes either.  The third album by any band gives you a sense of what they’ll be in the future, and TV On The Radio have told us here that they’re going to keep changing and keep surprising.  Thank fucking god.

Dear Science is not really a rock album.  Not at all.  The closest genre I can pin it on is funk, but only because it’s so funky.  It’s not really funk either, more like where funk wants to be in 20 years (maybe post-funk? Yeah, I like that).  But this album isn’t so uniform, so I think I’m just going to go track-by-track, like a real fanboy.

1. “Halfway Home” – Damn catchy, the most memorable song of the bunch (though not really the best).  The beat is almost as propulsive as “Wolf Like Me,” but the vocals keep it more snakelike and soulful as opposed to charging like its predecessor.
2. “Crying” – One of my three favorites on the album.  I like the little tight guitar figure, something that we really haven’t heard from TVOTR much.  This is the closest to funk or soul that they get throughout the album, and I think it really colors the rest of the whole piece.  Kyp Malone establishes himself here as on almost equal footing with Tunde Adebimpe as a singer, and he sings just about the same amount on this album.  Their voices are subtly different, Malone’s a bit more versatile, Adebimpe’s a bit stronger.  He sings all three of my favorite songs on this album, but that’s not Tunde’s fault.  By now though, we know that Kyp’s a better songwriter.
3. “Dancing Choose” – Okay, Tunde raps here.  That’s cool enough.  But if you need more, a) he can really do it, b) his lyrics are really clever, c) the chorus is really catchy, and d) like on nearly every track, the horn section is badass.  There.
4. “Stork & Owl” – Least memorable track on the album.  Kyp Malone does some great work with vocals, and the production is all there and cool, but something doesn’t mesh with me.  I think this is what separates Dear Science from You & Me, meaning that You & Me is better by just that much.  Not a lot, but I don’t have any bones with any song there, and this is just a little bit off.
5. “Golden Age” – And just when Dear Science was about to lose momentum, here comes another off-the-wall-in-its-funky-awesomeness track.  TVOTR loves itself some Track 5 – “Mister Grieves” from Young Liars, “Ambulance” from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, “Wolf Like Me” from Cookie Mountain, and now this.  There’s nothing really eloquent to say here, just listen.  I can only say that this is the most immediately appealing (read: mainstream) song they’ve ever done, and the second of my three favorites.
6. “Family Tree” – The only real mellow track on the album.  “Stork & Owl” and “DLZ” are both downtempo, but they have a lot of angst that they work with, whereas this reminds me a little of Coldplay, except, you know, better.  There’s delicate piano throughout, but the minimalist percussion (drum machine? Jaleel Bunton, what say you?) keeps the pace slowly going.  This is not TV On The Radio, but it’s very lovely and nice.  It works.
7. “Red Dress” – And back to the awesome funk.  The best lyrics of the album open this track, and it only stays awesome from there: “Fuck your war/’Cause I’m fat and in love/And the bombs are fallin’ on me/fo sho/But I’m scared to death/That I’m living a life not worth dying for.”
8. “Love Dog” – This is more like the TV On The Radio I know.  A little shuffle with some vibes, some “ooh”s from Tunde, and you have just another very good TVOTR song.
9. “Shout Me Out” – Straightforward, catchy, relaxed pop.  Constant guitar triplets in the first half add depth and keeps the song moving forward.  And then it breaks loose and we get the classic “Amen break” drum beat, scientifically proven to be the most propulsive beat in music.  Really good song.
10. “DLZ” – Tunde’s voice owns this track.  The way he growls the word “nevermind,” turns a word that normally is the most passive into a war cry.  Jesus.  Deep, dark funk.  The production can be credited for the dark feel, with the drums’ echo and the horns section.  I love this goddamn song.
11. “Lover’s Day” – This song is the third of my three favorites, and it’s an “I’ma sex you up” song in the classic vein of “Sexual Healing”.  The only twist here is that it’s a celebration, a rejoicing of carnal sex on an epic scale.  The song just gets bigger and bigger, even though the lyrics stay ludicrously intimate, like “I’m gonna take you/I’m gonna shake you/I’m gonna make you cum/Swear to God, it’ll get so hot/It’ll melt our faces off.” Yeah.  That other C-word was used, in a non-smutty and non-ironic way.  Did it just blow your mind? No? Well, it’s cool anyway.

The star of this album throughout is unquestionably David Sitek’s production.  As Sam Walker told me when we geeked out to each other about this album, this production is unbelievably immediate.  The music isn’t clouded in haze like Desperate Youth or the way prog-rock seems to be going these days.  It’s catapulted into your face, but in a very unique way, because that’s the only way Sitek knows how.

I will now wipe the fanboy semen out of the inside of my pants, and hope that you will forgive me and continue to read this blog, because it won’t happen again on our second date, it’s just that it was just so hot, oh god, oh god…..