AR: Dear Science

TV on the Radio - Dear Science (2008)

There's this beer called Ziegenbock. It's a Texas brew from Anheuser-Busch, and, as I recall, it's only sold in Texas by AB fiat. In fact, its slogan is "Brewed in Texas, Only For Texans." I don't know if they run a second ID check when you order it in Texan bars. Sucks to be you, foreigner / Riverwalk-seeker! It's a great dark beer, one I seek out on return trips. I had this friend Brian in college who used to describe the flavor as "very round."

Uh... what?

Well, Brian was an architect, an artistic type of architect at that, and apparently a synesthetic one, too. His comment engendered all kinds of weird looks and what-the-hell-does-that-mean-responses; Brian would either refuse to elaborate or, if pressed, would just mumble something about its smoothness and perfect roundness. As though this explained anything.

Well... Dear Science is a round album, with all the attendant confusion that will create. Yikes. But know that despite that ineffable Ziegen-quality, I love that beer, and I love this album. Because it's round.

What-the-hell-does-that-mean? Well, for one thing it's dominated by a big, smooth production - the bass and surging guitar / keyboards form a sort of membrane within which the syncopated drum rhythms, hand-claps and falsetto vocals just get enveloped. There's a darkness to the sound that despite those falsetto vocals and crunchy horn-ringing refuses penetration and defines TVoTR's sound. In a great way - the swelling of, for example, the opening track "Halfway Home," with all these disparate elements and that "buh-buh-buh-buh-buh" repeated vocal chorus, somehow comes off as organic. It's a big, contained, cohesive sound that envelops the listener and leaves everything plainly to be heard individually against a luscious whole. If you insist that I describe the indescribable, there's a smooth rumbling that permeates the album and gives it this nicely defined edge - it's just pretty and soothing, though that's not to say that this is some sort of pop-smoothed relaxing exercise (don't worry, that snarling sax and street buzz still dirtily ring out).

It's also not that the album is completely irreducible. If one thing stands out as parse-able, it's that on a few tracks, freaking PRINCE has been reincarnated pre-humously: "Crying," "Golden Age" and "Red Dress" all invoke His Highness in a way that is reminiscent but not derivative; they're hard funk numbers that accentuate some of the best of this band. And they are toe-tappingly bad-ass. Some reviews insinuate that this is a sort of a dance in the face of uncertainty / dread kinda album, and there is no denying that at least the dance part is spot on; these are soul-movers.

But smoothness fails to encompass it, as does some indication that this is just Grade A Prince emulation. There are aggressive, almost rap tracks on here, too: "Dancing Choose" juxtaposes a End-of-the-World-As-We-Know-It paced spoken delivery against an ear-boring catchy chorus (name-checking Axl Rose, no less), and "DLZ" employs a similarly aggressively-toned spoken vocal against a melodic "La-la-la" chorus. So a lot of the songs employ different lead styles (helped by the shared lead-singing duties of the band's two vocalists), but still, that background rumble-vibe permeates.

There are a couple of relative missteps: I can't get past the sing-songy rhythms / smarminess of "Shout Me Out," and some of the slower tracks, "Stork and Owl" and "Family Tree," plod on just a hair too much for my taste (though they are both quite pretty). It also warrants mentioning that the lyrics on the whole of the album are highly poetic but near-impenetrable; one gets a general sense of hope in the face of uncertain times, a command to dance in the face of adversity, but really, lines like "Now he gloss full bleed on a deaf dumb tree / Cod liver dollar signs, credit card autograph" just leave me bewildered as for direct translation. Not that it's bad, but it's part of the difficulty of commenting on the album - it's about sense and roundness, and so defies descriptive statements. I would readily say, though, that even these missteps supply the album with a balanced pace.

In case I haven't emphasized this enough, it's a great album: solid throughout, and excellent in terms of pure sound. The "roundness" is extraordinarily attractive, and even though it's hard for me to distill what is going on here, I find myself very drawn to this disc. It's easily their most accessible album (at least on the music side): tons of hooks, a variety of song styles, and again, a great, cohesive vibe throughout. A RICH album, for lack of more exacting terms. TV on the Radio have thoroughly established their sound by this point, and in Dear Science, that sound has catchily crystalized to be so round as to deflect scalpel-exploration. It's best just to put this one on and let a well-developed, exciting sound rush over you, and not fuss so much about the cells of this round beast.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Dancer's Choose"