Live: TV On The Radio & The Dirtbombs

Why do things right away when you could just wait a month or two?

TV On The Radio / The Dirtbombs
Wilbur Theater, October 13, 2008

Telling you that TVOTR is incredible in person is old news, so let's start with some exciting new business:

THE DIRTBOMBS



Absolutely outstanding. I listened to Ultraglide in Black, their 2001 soul cover album, damn near on repeat for the week leading up to this show... their new album, We Have You Surrounded, is good, but Ultraglide is the best thing I've heard all year. With the really great stuff, you know as soon as you hear a little bit of it, and Ultraglide is no exception.

Both Sly Stone cover "Underdog" or Phil Lynott cover, "Ode To A Black Man" deserve to be heard in all their proper glory. And you deserve to listen to them. Just barely below those two is "Chains of Love," embedded for your convenience, which also owns.



Unfortunately I had to wait for someone before the show, so I didn't make it inside in time to catch them playing either song. (At the pace those guys move along at, I probably missed about 5-6 songs in those 15 minutes.) But I did catch "Ever Lovin' Man" (embedded below) and "Chains of Love," so it worked out. My ears took a lot of punishment from being so close to the front, but entirely worth the trouble.



They have earned my business for each of their Boston shows for the immediate future. And if they come to you, you really need to check them out yourself.

TV ON THE RADIO


(credit)

Having seen them before (this is now my third time) and having gotten three completely different shows from them, each time elevating the source material, I'm pretty convinced. Easily one of the two or three best live acts I've ever seen. And any visit they make is going to get high marks from me.

I'm always impressed by how they go about repurposing their older songs, perfecting them over time for live performance. Case in point is "The Wrong Way," which has been making a slow journey from the medium-pace distort-o-matic recorded version to a show highlight that I dare say has overtaken "Wolf Like Me" in the rock-out department. (This will be the second year in a row that a TVOTR song will be my live-and-in-person highlight of the year.)



The version captured above was taken in Philly the night before the Boston show, and is notably missing the full horn section that makes the rendition I heard the full-blown Vegas-style explosion that it is. Tunde Adebimpe fed off the horns, hopping around even more than usual and knocking it out of the zip code, let alone the park. The closest comparison I could come up with, to what I saw and felt and was reminded of, was the James Brown church sequence in The Blues Brothers. It built and built and built. I kinda loved it.

Link:

The thing is, I was hoping for similarly joyous treatments of the new material. And I didn't get them. The new stuff played fine. The Benedictine Horns sounded a little off on "Golden Age" and "Crying" (though "Dancing Choose" went far better for them), and the result was less than perfect, given how awesome "Golden Age" in particular is.



The bottom line is that of the opening five-song murderer's row, the unquestionable highlights of that stretch were still oldies "The Wrong Way" and "Wolf Like Me." The new songs couldn't hold a candle to the old ones. I'm sure they will work that out; their second tour supporting Cookie Mountain was far better than the first.

Also on the less-than-glowing side, their set list surprised me a little. While I appreciate their range of abilities as a band, and I'm impressed that they thought to play two selections from Young Liars, I was put off by the long, filler-filled lull during the third quarter of the show. I didn't show up to hear "Stork and Owl," "Blues From Down Here," and similarly middling songs. Oddly, "Stork And Owl" is probably the ONLY song on Dear Science worth skipping, and they managed to include it at the expense of "Red Dress," understandably, and "DLZ" and "Lover's Day," less understandably. Leaving a full four new songs out in order to bring along "A Method?" Seriously? At least play "Tonight" or "Province," two other heinous omissions, if you're gonna preserve Cookie Mountain's lesser works. "Tonight" had never made much of an impression on me, until they opened their 4/19/07 show with it. It's surprisingly moving in person. "A Method" just sucks. What the hell.

But that doesn't change my opinion of their quality one bit. Despite the time I've spent nitpicking here, they are minor complaints on the whole. The great largely outweighs the not. The lulls and less-interesting song selections were flanked by some seriously excellent work. They are a truly tremendous live band.

As I've parroted before, the essence of this band has not been captured in the studio. One day, they will release a live album that presents their live sound definitively to the masses, as Okonokos did for My Morning Jacket, and people will flip the fuck out. (And "The Wrong Way" will be that album's best track by far.) I would like more people to have the experience I've had with these guys.

Other thoughts from the show:

* I liked the Wilbur Theater's concert setup. It's a skinny, tall theater, so floor access is that much better if you get it. And it's historic, so it's got some character, though not really that of a rock show. But best of all, unlike some theater-based rock shows, where you have to deal with immovable seating and strict ticketing restrictions, the Wilbur gets that shit out of the way! And with (I presume) fire codes involved, it's less of a sea of humanity down there at the bottom. The only minus is the lack of bar. But that can also be a plus, depending on the crowd. (Kyp actually thanked us for having so much fun despite the lack of bar.) On the whole, I give the Wilbur an A-.

* I was close enough to the stage to read Tunde's set list (in reverse) prior to the start of the show. While the blogger in me furiously noted the list in his phone, the fan in me knew what was coming ahead of time, and had a bit of the joy of surprise taken away. This is a good example of the reviewer/blogger mindset taking the soul out of the experience.

* Check this nugget from the AV Club interview with Tunde:

AVC: Cookie Mountain felt like an artistic hurricane. By contrast, Dear Science feels, not reserved, but...

TA: More regular?

AVC: Exactly.

TA: [Laughs.] The recording of Cookie Mountain is something that none of us really wanted to experience over again, let alone accidentally repeat. Doing so probably would have resulted in the band breaking up, or one of us causing another grievous bodily harm.

AVC: Why is that?

TA: It was just a really dark place. I'm glad that record exists, but it was kind of like the Ren & Stimpy episode where they get space madness, and they're orbiting the planet, ready to kill each other for a bar of soap. Coming home after touring, we had to be like, "Guys, remember how we actually liked each other? Let's do that again, and make something that comes out of that." Which is what Dear Science is.

Ren and Stimpy!!! The guy who sang "all your dreams are over now / all your wings have fallen down," draws analogies to Ren and Stimpy. This is like learning that Cormac McCarthy drawing inspiration from The Three Stooges.

Anyway, great show as always. I don't know that I really described the character of the show,

SET LIST
Halfway Home
The Wrong Way
Dancing Choose
Golden Age
Wolf Like Me
Young Liars
Love Dog
Stork and Owl
Dreams
Blues From Down Here
Shout Me Out
Satellite

[encore break]

Crying
A Method
Staring At The Sun

TV On The Radio - Dear Science,

TV On The Radio
Dear Science,

The comma-laden Dear Science, is a surprisingly positive and immediate effort from a band known primarily for a distinctively brooding sound that is typically described as post-apocalyptic. While each song on Return To Cookie Mountain, their 2006 breakthrough, is shrouded in a unique fuzz that inspires visions of broken machinery and rust, the entirety of their follow-up is shiny, clean, and, most shockingly, a lot of fun. If their debut Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes was the apocalypse, and Cookie Mountain was the first sprout from beneath the rubble, then Dear Science, is the party.

That new brightness is a double-edged sword. The primary source of fun with Cookie Mountain, and to a lesser extent Desperate Youth, is in the discovery of musicality in the untraditional elements used to build not just atmosphere ("Playhouses," "Tonight," "Don't Love You") but front-and-center hooks ("I Was A Lover"). That aforementioned distortion-heavy signature sound of theirs is gone, replaced by drum machines, funky guitar lines, clean reverberations, and (gasp) hand-clapping. It's not really a better-vs-worse thing... one part of me had been looking forward to hearing what kind of crazy shit they'd come up with next, and the other part is just digging the new hotness.

If there is a clear disadvantage, it's in the smaller emotional punch Dear Science, packs. Their biggest songs, "Wolf Like Me" off Cookie Mountain and "Staring At The Sun" off Desperate Youth, are so strong because they're so immediate, urgent, and terrifying on the surface. The best work on Dear Science, doesn't carry the same rage or spite... by contrast, it's sleek and composed. More intimate, maybe, but not as effective in stirring up a deep response.

But at the same time, that best work is really excellent. Their mastery of rhythm is on full display, particularly on the faux-rap intro to "Dancing Choose" and the faux-African horns of "Red Dress" (contributed by, er, non-faux Afrobeat band Antibalas). "Crying" is slowly becoming a favorite, its choruses becoming increasingly thick with horns and synths on top of the main guitar riff. "DLZ" has a heavy, almost Zeppelin-ish stomp. "Lover's Day" is a strong, call-to-arms closer that leaves you with the kind of explosion that every album should end with.

Even their filler is better than ever, far superior to that of Cookie Mountain and Desperate Youth. "Love Dog" and "Family Tree" aren't as deep or unique as "Dirtywhirl" or "Let The Devil In," for example, but they work a whole lot better, both as complements to the stronger tracks and on their own.

When I last wrote about Cookie Mountain, I suggested that TVOTR was capable of more. While Dear Science, is not quite what I had in mind, and while it won't Represent Something Important the way that Return To Cookie Mountain did, it's easily one of the top releases of the year. It stands as evidence that TVOTR are realizing how good they are, gaining confidence in their abilities, and relying less on sonic trickery to make compelling music.

New TVOTR Songs

Two new TV On The Radio songs have been making the rounds of late, and they're both awfully promising. They're both a little simpler and smaller than their usual fare, but good nonetheless. I'm so ready for the new album. It's been a weak year, full of disappointments, disasters, boredom, and downturns. I can't write a best-of post of nothing but de facto choices; if Gnarls Barkley makes my 2008 list, I quit. I really need Dear Science, to be good.

"Golden Age" and "Dancing Choose" can be heard here, as of today. They're also touring this fall; go see them.