TV On The Radio - Dear Science

It's only been officially available for five days. Doesn't matter. This is the best thing they've ever done.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this album a year from now, or five years, or ten years. Let's just say that TV On The Radio has finally found the perfect balance in their music between dread & anticipation, between apocalypse & redemption. Between art & pop. Music that would sound at home on radios as well as museums--95.5 The Beat & MOMA.

TV On The Radio embraces their contradictions like it's the only thing that can save them.

I could tell you the story of how they made the album, I could pick out snatches of lyric that signify & evoke. That stuff's available all over the internet wherever you look. And it's definitely worth reading, especially the band's testifying on behalf of Billy Idol's "Eyes Without a Face" and The Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian".

Instead, since this is presumably a blog about Athens music, it might be nice to mention that this band who has played all over the world played a show here in town at the 40Watt a year ago. They didn't have to come here. It was probably the smallest town, the smallest venue they played the whole tour.

Anyway, I was hanging out at the old X-Ray Cafe when the band stopped in to look around. I was having a weirdly introverted, raw-nerved kind of afternoon, so I just let them do their thing. Smiled and nodded hello whenever someone made eye contact. Listening to them chat with the store's owner, they sounded nice, funny, friendly, down-to-earth, and decent. I couldn't think of anything to say beyond thanks for coming to our town and playing this show, so I left them alone. Later, when they put on one of the most ferociously transcendent shows I have ever seen (check out this appearance on David Letterman for a taste)...



...it made me feel even better to know that these people were genuine in what they were doing.

This is an album to live with, to listen to over and over. In a time when so much that passes for culture is disposable and flat, TV On The Radio has done that rarest of things--created something that can exist in any world you want it to, even if that world is disposable and flat.

And in the process, they may end up making the world a little less flatter.

Here's the first video from the album.