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)