Released on Interscope, 2008
On my review of Return to Cookie Mountain I made a point of highlighting TV on the Radio's brilliant incorporation of funk into their experimental inde rock. But there is one issue with that, you couldn't dance to it. Their songs engage you with a sense of loss, hopelessness and bleak humour - but they aren't sexy (barring Wolf Like Me), and they aren't danceable.
Dear Science changes that, this is TV on the Radio's pop album, but it isn't a compromise. They play their cards close to their chest initially, the opener Halfway Home (one of the weaker tracks) welcomes back their trademark droning guitar fuzz, but as the song and album progresses the arrangements are noticeably lighter. The percussive rhythms are just as complex, but softer and somehow more inviting. And most importantly, their funk edge is bleeding out of their horn section into sharp rhythm guitar work, reminiscent of Remain in Light era Talking Heads.
But, though Dear Science is a more musically optimistic record than its predecessor, an undercurrent of future-dread still underpins it all, thematically timely with the election of Obama. The first single, Golden Age is a good example of this; in the lead up to the uplifting chorus an element of menace enters Adebimpe's vocals as they tumble faster and faster until it overtakes him and the whole song erupts in glorious horns and strings and falsetto. But somehow the inevitability of it all seems suffocating.
And this poison sting only grows more apparent when you begin to delve through the lyrics, a trend which Golden Age seems to intensify, also signifying the album's strongest patch. Next up is Family Tree, a gorgeous ballad which demonstrates how far they are willing to push their sound. No percussion, crashing pianos and mournful violins, the nuanced vocal performance is all that anchors it as a TVOTR track, as Adebimpe croons a tragic love story.
Were laying in the shadow of your family tree
Your haunted heart and me
Brought down by an old idea whose time has come
And in the shadow of the gallows of your family tree
There's a hundred hearts soar free
Pumping blood to the roots of evil to keep it young
The tempo is revived with Red Dress, a pulsating energetic track with a killer hook when the horns fully unveil themselves, the lyrics dealing with Western complacency are awash with irony and more than a touch of self loathing.
Come bear witness to the whore of Babylon
If Red Dress was the illness, then DLZ shows us the symptoms (or the other way round, this is a terrible metaphor) - an impassioned attack on the War on Terror, and my favourite song from the album. On a first impression, the breathy vocals and sing-song chorus sound a little twee, but the track builds superbly.
It doesn't quite match the textural depths and beauty of Return to Cookie Mountain, but Dear Science is a brilliant album, showing a progression in their sound that I am warming to the more I listen.