The abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko once said that "... the familiar identity of things has to be pulverized in order to destroy the finite association with which our society increasingly enshrouds every aspect of our environment."
It is uncertain if Brooklyn's TV on the Radio are Rothko fans or are even interested in "pulverizing" any of pop music's existing forms, but not since Sonic Youth's records of the mid-1990s has an American band's trail-blazing creativity called to mind the late painter's wisdom.
It is difficult to name a band that sounds even remotely like that genre-defying group, and equally hard to think of bands as much on the cutting edge as TVOTR, coming to The Paradise Rock Club on Saturday.
It is near impossible to find a comparably avant-garde band with a major recording contract. Nonetheless, after one critically adored EP (2003's "Young Liars") and a Shortlist Music Prize-winning full-length debut (2004's "Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes"), TVOTR released "Return to Cookie Mountain" (to which the Daily gave five stars), their sophomore full-length, on Interscope Records last month.
As was true with "Young Liars" and "Desperate Youth," the most readily evident characteristic of "Cookie Mountain" is that it does not sound like anything else ever recorded on this planet. Writing about TVOTR is difficult, because their palette is so diverse that their sound requires an atypical vocabulary.
With elements of jazz and doo-wop, experimental and post-rock, trip-hop and shoegaze, TVOTR's music is so disparately influenced that identifying individual techniques and even instruments can be like isolating ingredients in a Slim Jim.
Nonetheless, amidst the hazy milieu of textured production and endlessly looped feedback, several elements of "Young Liars" and "Desperate Youth" emerge as parts of the band's signature sound. Keyboardist David Andrew Sitek's penchant for near-imperceptible subtlety is crucial to TVOTR's work. On the a capella, barbershop-esque "Ambulance" from "Desperate Youth," he stealthily buoys bandmates Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone's duet with various ambient found sounds and faintly ephemeral chatter that never quite gets loud enough to understand. This effect not only displays Sitek's attention to detail and meticulous studio skills, but also adds a decisive - if confounding - twist to an otherwise B-rate song.
Most noticeable, though, are the vocals. Alternating between one of the most impressive, silky-smooth sopranos in independent music and a glass-shattering falsetto, Adebimpe coolly sings lyrics that require a decoder ring to make sense of.
"King Eternal" from "Desperate Youth" is a textbook example of this. He effortlessly switches between the soprano pipes and squeaking falsetto as he detachedly sings, "Afraid of thunder children, so hide your ears/ Hope your fortress holds up for many many many years/ Shudder, it's a shame/ Lightning, call the game/ Send us up a baby boy/ Let the smoke carry his name" as though these words make perfect sense.
It is a beautiful song and Adebimpe sings it impeccably, but, as with much of modern and contemporary art, its meaning is murky at best. Out of the cryptic fog, certain questions arise: With pipes as good as his, why sing falsetto? And, for that matter, what the hell is he talking about? The music is so dense and full of hidden subtleties, that it is difficult to ever be certain.
What is certain, however, is that on their sophomore effort, the band, whose core trio of singer Adebimpe, producer Sitek, and guitarist/vocalist Malone have been together since 2003, have hung on to parts of the avant-garde-barbershop paradox that spun heads on their first two proper albums, but only tenuously. "Cookie Mountain," their best album to date, contradictorily finds TVOTR at both their most primitive and most advanced, but certainly at their most creative.
Whereas "Young Liars" and "Desperate Youth" relied exclusively on drum machines for rhythms and heavily on synths and keyboards for melodies, "Cookie Mountain" is in many ways a conservative retreat to live instrumentation in the best way possible. A greater emphasis on Malone's guitar and the introduction of live drums and live bass imbue "Cookie Mountain" with an atmospheric depth bordering on tribal that the previous albums lacked.
Sitek blends the low-end bass chords and simplistic tom-and-snare drums of "Wolf Like Me" into a whirling, seamless musical vortex denser than anything TVOTR could have possibly produced with their colder instruments. "Playhouses," with its impenetrable layers of guitar fuzz and reverb, is perhaps the best example of the oceanic, tribal setting TVOTR achieved on "Cookie Mountain." The fuzz fills the speakers, suspending the song's other instruments in ways that bring to mind Rothko's infamous floating color fields.
Now he can play the sitar like a motherbleeping riot
At the same time, "Cookie Mountain" also represents a decided maturation for TVOTR. Not only do they display a better mastery of many of the techniques they experimented with on "Young Liars" and "Desperate Youth,' but they also add even more styles to their ever-growing palette of influences.
The jaw-dropping opener, "I Was a Lover," represents both of these developments. The song begins with eight bars of simple, trembling hip-hop drums, until an epic wash of bass guitar, slippery sitars, and what sounds like an elephant's roar boldly enter. Sitek rears his genius head by burying the sitar, a new instrument to the TVOTR arsenal, low enough in the mix to merely texture instead of define the tune, but not so low as to be inaudible, like the chatter in "Ambulance." The new instrument deployed in a traditional but improved way is a theme throughout "Cookie Mountain."
Still, although "Cookie Mountain" departs in many ways from past TVOTR releases, it is still quintessentially them. Adebimpe's vocals and Sitek's production may be deployed and manipulated in slightly different ways, but the Protean pipes, confounding writing and infinitely expansive soundscapes of old still define this record.
Adebimpe adopts his falsetto more often, but he also dives deeper into his register than ever before. Much of "Playhouses" is sung in a dark, almost guttural bellow; the rest is sung in his polished croon dotted with falsetto. It is definitely new, but aesthetically, it doesn't really feel that different.
The same is true for Sitek's production. Though he structures and manipulates TVOTR's new live sounds differently than their old mechanical ones, he still does so with the same proclivity for nuance within sonic expanses. Some of the instruments have changed, and so too have some of Sitek's interpretations, but, as he did in the past, he still arranges everything on "Cookie Mountain" so that his open spaces get filled with layer upon layer of meticulous detail. This makes for a rewarding and mind-bending album, but how it relates to a live setting is uncertain.
TV on the Radio may not transmit in the Paradise
Painstakingly minute details and expert studio handling is all well and good in the controlled environment of a recording booth, but getting these fragile forces to align well in a club depends on a slew of external factors, from lighting and acoustics to how many people show up. It's basically a crapshoot, and this has been the buzz surrounding TVOTR's latest batch of performances.
Reviews range from the staggeringly superlative to the humdrum to the "wow, what a let down." On some nights, the band maintains a precarious balance between Malone's guitar, Adebimpe's voice and Sitek's numerous and varied instruments. Their sounds blend into an even mass but retain their individual identity, and everyone goes home happy.
Other nights, it is as though the band is as confused by how to make their music as the audience is about to how to listen to it. They spend the entire show trying to extricate their own complex layers of music from each other, with some sounds overpowering others and the music sounding more like a car crash than modern art.
Unfortunately for TVOTR, Saturday's sold-out show with Grizzly Bear will be at The Paradise Rock Club. The venue, with its bizarre seating arrangement and stage position, has hosted train wrecks from such formidable artists as M.I.A. and Prefuse 73. With a floor-to-ceiling pillar in the middle of the floor obscuring the stage and a slight decline in the floor towards the back of the room, it is one of the city's least hospitable venues. The clubby lighting, VIP tables and bustling bar make it feel more like a hot spot than a place to see shows.
This is a real loss. Music as creative, as new and as saturated with insightful and original nuance as TVOTR's belongs in a place like a museum, where it can be thoroughly engaged for a prolonged period of time. In so many ways, their music is vastly different from anything that has preceded it, and this is the overwhelming sensation that listening to their newest record evokes.
Right now, TV on the Radio is creating something where before there was nothing, and even if they haven't destroyed anything in the process, this is an achievement that Mark Rothko would appreciate.
