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)

Preach Beauty Always and, When Necessary, Use Words

The difficult part of writing on, or discussing, a meaningful experience is that we run the risk of diminishing what was more amazing for us than we can attempt to match with the words at our disposal. “Awesome” is overused. “Crazy” sounds too frantic. “Righteous” rings a bit too much of the eighties. Though I don’t doubt your lexicon reaches beyond these clichés, a movie, a book, a poem, a concert that moves us (higher) incites some innate, beneficent desire to share, to want others to know the tingle, the warmth, the “a ha!”, the inside joke, the connection, the lift. This business of communication is an important one, indeed, and we constantly, consciously or otherwise, probe the limits of language when sharing what happens in our lives with others.

Seeing Explosions in the Sky is an experience beyond words, causing one to wish that there were some beauty-language (Hopelandic) that would successfully express to another a taste of what this band is about, what they create onstage, weaving wonders of aural alchemy that turn to some kind of gold when spread about enraptured audiences. The Texas-based instrumental band(connect to website) visited Congress Theater in Chicago on July 2nd. The day marked their ten year anniversary as a band which, with the difficulties that artists working together often face, quietly impresses. Standing at the lone vocal-microphone at stage right, Munaf Rayani, one of the three guitarists (there isn’t any obvious spotlighting of a frontman) softly spoke his traditional and ever-perfect introduction for the band: “My name is Munaf, and we’re Explosions in the Sky from Texas, USA,” walking toward the band to the rumble of an audience already roaring with anticipation.

For the next hour and a half, they soared, climbed, ventured into the sky, giving off radiant explosions of harmony the whole way. Not a word was spoken during the set – the band is entirely instrumental – yet their performance was evidence enough that meaning is deeper than words. Craig Detweiler, co-author of A Matrix of Meanings, says of ambient music, Sigur Rós in particular, “Without learning a new tongue, listeners get involved in the moods created by the music. Interpretations begin from feeling, not thinking, engaging “sentences of harmony.” The word “sentence,” after all, comes from the Latin verb “sentire,” meaning “to feel.”

For music void of lyrics, the possibilities for connection with the listener are as infinite and intricate as the tiny refractions in his personality and disposition, as intimate as the impact of words spoken and glances exchanged throughout her day. This approach makes the recipient the sole interpreter of the material, and each listener brings a different interpretation to each song. While it makes discussion difficult, this difficulty reminds us that music is about music, about a shared experience, not about our ability to dissect or describe or translate.

Language is not an absolute, nor is it static; it combines infinitely subjective and particular definitions, which is both its mystery and beauty. As I continue in life, I find that words are continually redefined and shaped: beauty, trust, faith, love, friendship. Language finds itself at a curious crux: we have “objective” definitions, what one might find in a dictionary, that give us some point of reference. However, the word “family” in your mind may be radically different from the concept I have in my mind, based on our diverse experiences, which outlines the importance of intentional communication, and the peril of assumption. We have to constantly learn one another’s language. As Carl Sandburg wrote, “When will we all speak the same language?”

The music of Explosions in the Sky leads to a necessarily idiosyncratic experience, one that all I was with at the time agreed was “Awesome.” Sometimes “Awesome” simply has to suffice for something so, well, explosive.

(Thanks to BA for the helps in editing this one)

PS - This passage is from Wendell Berry's essay, "Local Knowledge in the Age of Information," and, if I were a better writer I'd revise my essay to weave this one in, yet I think you'll make the implied connections and not mind the add-on approach:

"There is in addition for us humans [concerning knowledge], always, the unknown, things perhaps that we need to know that we do not know and are never going to know. There is mystery. Obvious as it is, we easily forget that beyond our sciences and arts, beyond our technology and our language, is the irreducible reality of our precious world that somehow, so far, has withstood our demands and accommodated our life, and of which we will always be dangerously ignorant."

Mm.