It is always astonishing when a band consistently improves in leaps and bounds with each and every release. One starts to wonder why we even bother to listen to the drivel that comes from other artists, rather than just wait for the next, exponentially improved release from one of these meteoric bands.
It must be noted, though, that TV on the Radio never even started out earthbound. Their very first release, Young Liars, a five song 2003 EP, was a blast of something irreducibly new and cool. Return to Cookie Mountain, in 2006, was even better than all reasonable expectations had allowed. The album title was a reference to a level in Super Mario World, and the album sounded like a video game—alien and strange, fast-moving, animated, full of surprising corners and visceral delights. Cookie Mountain consistently felt like it shouldn’t really work, shouldn’t really make sense, but it did. It was beautiful, and, again, something distinctly new and different.
And now, with Dear Science, TVOTR has done it again. The cold, fascinating videogame world of Cookie Mountain has been injected with humanity and warmth, like Amy Adams falling through the manhole in Enchanted. Suddenly the precise music doesn’t sound quite as calculated; its looser, more alive, more forgiving. The lyrics have moved from war and paranoia to declarations of humanity, and the melodies are prettier and easier, less choppy.
TVOTR has, in a way, progressed all the way through indie rock—from cool but difficult to a band that can produce songs like “Crying” that, minus the blips and bloops and the signature multi-tracked vocals, could have been written by any (talented) songwriter with a sentimental streak and a good ear for chords. The songs on this album are complex and layered, the product of outrageous talent, but they are also accessible, simple to listen to, not off-putting.
The album’s closer, “Lover’s Day,” is anthemic enough to give Arcade Fire a run for their money, with soaring choruses and complex, driving rhythms. But it’s not about the empty universe or the cold countryside or even religion. Its about sex—“I swear to God you’ll get so hot/It will melt our faces off/Then we can see / the you, the me/ The mirror, outside clock.” And yet it’s so rousing and uplifting, with piccolos and group choirs and that endless drumbeat, that it seems to be speaking for the universe itself. And that’s this album’s true achievement: hooking astonishingly proficient music onto everyday intimate human moments, and painting the whole thing across the sky.
Voices’s Choices: “Golden Age,” “Family Tree,” “Lover’s Day”
