Sounds of Heaven from Brooklyn?

“Tv on the radios new album is what the rapture will sound like if Gods angels are an indie band” was what a friend of mine recently texted to me, referring to the album “Dear Science” (the grammatical errors are not my own and I think that he would smile seeing me include them for authenticity’s sake). I’m not sure that I completely agree with him; if I were to imagine a band that most resembles an ensemble of heavenly hosts, Sufjan Stevens and his eclectic “Illinoisemakers” comes to mind. But I do think that he is on to something.

In a recent interview with the New York Times about their new album, “Dear Science,” TV on the Radio guitarist Dave Sitek explains, “A lot of bands have something to say; we have something to ask.” This posture of inclusivity, of listener engagement, permeates all of their music, reaching back to their first album, “Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes.” Though rather experimental and unconventional, a fusion of hip-hop, rock, jazz, and soul, Brooklyn-based TV on the Radio has yet to put out an album that does not resonate with its multifarious audience. Before “Dear Science,” their first and second albums, “Desperate Youth…” and “Return to Cookie Mountain,” respectively, each gained wide critical acclaim from musically diverse sources (i.e. Filter Magazine, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, etc.), and experienced decent sales.

What has kept me listening over the years, however, has been the incredible way that the artists (as well as being musicians, the band members each pursue different arts as well, one of them once being a sculptor for the now-defunct MTV cartoon “Celebrity Deathmatch”) of TV on the Radio push the boundary of pop music while not going overboard into the depths of inaccessible, experimentalist noise. The beats are fresh, the guitar licks tight, the lyrics profound, and the vocals provide a unique and curiously perfect cohesiveness to the complexity of the dark aural blend. They pull all this off while remaining a witty and laid-back bunch. Later in the interview, singer Tunde Adebimpe, describes the group: “As heavy as some of the songs get [on Dear Science], the joking around that goes on between the five of us gets out of control sometimes.”

For a band purported to be “God’s angels,” this image of levity and harmony is quite fitting.

(originally published in Illinois Wesleyan University's newspaper, The Argus)

A Chilling Stroll Down "Revolutionary Road"

Shock value in art is generally something I frown upon because, if for no other reason, it is a cheap attempt to elicit a visceral response from the audience. There is superficial shock effect, as might be seen in a low budget horror movie or an absurdly avant-garde flick (see: “Vampiyaz”), which pale in comparison to subtle, unnerving aspects woven into works that effect long after leaving the museum, after pulling out of the theater parking lot, after closing the cover. Emily Dickinson claimed, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know it is poetry.” If her description holds true, then the movie “Revolutionary Road” is, no doubt, a lyric told from multiple perspectives, often without words.

Sam Mendes tells the story of an unrecognized, or unspoken, emptiness of the American dream in a way similar to his 1999 release “American Beauty,” though this rendition lacks Kevin Spacey’s lighthearted quips that assuage the bluntness of the broken lives exposed in the movie. Revolutionary Road pulls no punches while maintaining a certain calculated tact throughout, illustrating the nightmare that often haunts those stepping into adulthood: the perpetual routine of a dull existence. Mendes holds a magnifying glass to the deterioration of the Wheeler’s, DeCaprio and Winslet, lives, crumbling within the suffocation and apathy that result from the dynamic of their relationship.

John Givings, played by Michael Shannon, is the one breath of fresh air in the story, a character that incisively exposes the reality of the Wheeler’s dysfunction and seems to be the only one in the movie to see things as they truly are. "Plenty of people are on to the emptiness," John says to Frank and April, "but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness." It is a curiously perfect surprise to see Shannon receive an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, as he is onscreen for no more than twenty electric and revelatory minutes.

As the movie displays continually more unnerving callousness and unresolved conflict in an intimate relationship, it becomes clear that April and Frank are trapped not by their environment but by one another and the disappointments and fears they harbor. They each seek escape, though it is from the cages of their bodies and minds – not a particular situation, as they suppose. Revolutionary Road is a meditation on human fragility and the futility of changing another, or oneself, with one’s own self-interested hands.

No obvious resolution emanates to ease the hearts and minds of viewers as they sit watching the credits, trying to muster the strength to rise from their seats after having trudged through the complex swamp of emotions and implications conjured by the movie. It begs the questions, What would have changed had the Wheelers left suburbia? What is it inside of us that longs for escape, for freedom from routine? Seeing the holy in the mundane has to be more than a trivial desire in life because we live in particulars: parking in the same garage after work each day, seeing the same neighbors through the kitchen window. Revolutionary Road is a call to find meaning in seeming emptiness, in the un-romanticized aspects of life, to search inside one another and realize the deep mysteries and beauty that yearn for discovery.

(originally published by rednoW)