TV On The Radio: Dear Science

One of the most striking

things about TV On The Radio's 2006 opus Return To Cookie Mountain was one of its very first

sounds: a mysterious sample that could have been a warped orchestral blast, the

mellifluous din of a building collapse, or the mating call of a brontosaurus.

That sound set the tone for a hurricane of an album whose mystery was made to

unravel over the span of a hundred listens. Its subtlety came, almost

incongruously, from an overabundance of great ideas, rather than the refinement

of one in particular. On Dear Science, TVOTR finds a more traditional consistency,

transmuting that dirty experimentalism into a lush cleanliness that

eases—rather than hurls—its songs into the art-making ether.

It's a turnoff at first,

but beauty becomes this band, whether it's the bare-bones sort (as on 2003's Young

Liars EP)

or as expansive as Dear Science. "Halfway Home" opens the disc with the packed-in

punk of the Cookie Mountain single "Wolf Like Me," but soon evolves into a

taut, glassy piece of Peter Gabriel bigness. The breezy exhale of "Crying"

stands atop a tightly edited drum loop and well-placed curlicues of guitar and

horn. On "Dancing Choose," Tunde Adebimpe raps in a frantic jag, but lets up to

give way to an even-keeled chorus. It's as if TVOTR (or in-band producer David

Sitek) has learned to compartmentalize its myriad bits: The grit and pulse come

from Afrobeat flourishes and percussion that pops ("Golden Age," "Red Dress");

the epic overtones arrive on swells of strings or washes of guitar ("Stork

& Owl," "Family Tree"); and the fantastic complementary croons of Adebimpe

and Kyp Malone finally stand at the forefront of the songs.

Organized chaos is a

wonderful thing unto itself, but there's much to be said for simply pretty, and

TV On The Radio says it here. Even so, if Cookie Mountain was a cyclone, Dear

Science

is the eye, and something truly nasty waits on the other side.