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HOT OFF THE PRESS (#12) - TV on the Radio & Cold War Kids
by Nick Courtright
It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for Nick Courtright’s weekly first glance at music discovered in the last seven days, whether it be just-released, just-leaked, or some long-lost gem that has remained under the radar. Click here for other recent editions of Hot Off the Press, featuring acts such as of Montreal, Peter Bjorn & John, Vivian Girls, Bodies of Water, White Denim, Conor Oberst, The Walkmen, The Bug, Fight Bite, and Grizzly Bear.
TV on the Radio – Dear Science,
released September 23 on DGC/Interscope
Report Card: A
There has always been the foul stench of drama around TV on the Radio. Maybe it has something to do with their obnoxiously broad appeal, or their innately overblown sound, or maybe it has something to do with band’s position as one of the very, very few notable bands of racial diversity in indie rock, a reality that has seemed to make the frustratingly pasty music media a little comfortable and self-congratulatory in their praise. All this put together has bred a certain stink about the band, as if they weren’t actually that good at all, and their bombast and the resulting acclaim was merely a token reward from the affirmative-action minded who have been wounded by indie rock’s apparent elitism. Unfortunately, though, for the conspiracy theorists who want to diminish the band, TV on the Radio—separated from all this sorry gunk—can be pretty fucking good.
Although Dear Science, isn’t as immediately bubbly as its predecessor, the breakthrough Return to Cookie Mountain, it’s a frightfully satisfying conglomeration of styles from an ambitiously wide palette—everything from soul to arena rock to rap to electronica is represented, and without a trace of the irony or slapdashery that often plagues such genre-bending experiments. Already the album has produced several notable options for the replay button, including single “Golden Age,” “Dancing Choose,” and stunning lead-off track “Halfway Home.” The melodrama in TV on the Radio’s music regularly foams over the surface, and although the hugeness of their approach may turn some fickle listeners off at first blush, repeated listens will draw in even the most skeptical fans of singer-songwriters and sparse arrangement.
In the end, Dear Science is a buoyant and consistently surprising collection, as even the tracks that sound more or less terrible at first (including the aforementioned “Dancing Choose” and cheesy “Shout Me Out”) eventually come around, and the band’s vision is wholly presented. It is no less than upsetting that considerations regarding the band’s ethnic comprisal are near the top of any spoken or unspoken list of concerns regarding the band’s viability, but that’s a sign of the times, and a topic for a much longer article. Remove that weighty issue from the picture and what you get is this: a fascinating, high-volume, well-produced, catchy, complicated, and ultimately quite excellent album by a band deserving every bit of acclaim they get.
Listen to songs by TV on the Radio here
Cold War Kids – Loyalty to Loyalty
released September 23 on Downtown
Report Card: B-
Cold War Kids are so divisive even your grandparents argue over whether they are the shining light of new soul rock come down from above to lead us all into a new era of heartfelt tunesmanship, or whether they are a bunch of underschooled and self-absorbed fools with an editing deficiency who are example 1A of blog bands gone painfully awry. To get down to the nitty-gritty of this polarity, it seems people love or hate this band at first glance, and the fact that its members met in a Los Angeles Bible school makes them, to some discerning jerks, all the more despicable. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it? And aren’t they—bellowing blowhard character-based lyrics and all—just some dudes harmlessly making sometimes-catchy sometimes-hollow jazz-inflected guitar rock?
Yes, they are, and here they’ve given us Loyalty to Loyalty, an album which holds in its title no small amount of circumstantial tongue-in-cheek, considering the ship-jumping and bandwagon-hopping the group has evoked. Loyalty to Loyalty is an album which does not have the strengths of their initial LP, Robbers & Cowards—truth be told, I enjoyed Robbers & Cowards, and was hoping the band would prove themselves above the criticism—and it often settles for a yelping comfort zone devoid of the challenge and thoughtfulness of R & C. In essence, this album is very much akin to Tapes ‘n Tapes’ Walk It Off and Art Brut’s It’s a Bit Complicated—a sophomore album which would have been pretty solid as a debut, but looks pale, thin, and a bit half-assed as a sophomore effort. So we’ll call Loyalty to Loyalty a bit of a slump, if the word “slump” can apply to a band whose first full-length inspired no shortage of trash talk.
That relative condemnation aside, this album does have some nice tracks, though nothing comes close to the catchiness and embraceability of older tunes “Hang Me Up to Dry,” “We Used to Vacation,” or “Hospital Beds.” The songs here don’t develop their characters nearly as fully, and the instrumentation often feels purely background; as an example, two of the new album’s best tracks, “I’ve Seen Enough” and “Every Man I Fall For,” would be even better with a bit more instrumental dynamism. Besides that, the only songs here which really grab are the slow-burning “Dreams Old Men Dream” and the fitfully repetitive “Something Is Not Right With Me”; the latter is the album’s lead single, and has already ignited a somewhat-predictable internet flame-war of love and hate. To summarize, fans of Cold War Kids will have to be satisfied with a decent and listenable but never earth-shattering offering, while the band’s detractors surely will be smiling as they drive nails into the coffin.
Listen to songs by Cold War Kids here