Dear Science Drips Beauty On Its Haunting Trip

By Katya Rosil

September 24, 2008

The highly anticipated new album by TV on the Radio, Dear Science showers us with eleven tracks that surpass the already impeccable energy of the previous album Return to Cookie Mountain. Taken as a whole, the stunning variety on Science surprises the listener.

The band borrows from every musical genre and compiles in a cohesive manner to make the blippy, trippy, and fuzzy sound that is all its own. We get loaded with funk, disco, and hip-hop on tracks such as “Dancing Choose,” “Golden Age,” and “Red Dress.” Each makes listeners want to dance. The seemingly sweet ballads like “Stork and Owl” and “Family Tree” haunt with extreme beauty and linger on the brain. Some songs seem to have evolved directly from Return to Cookie Mountain—as in the case of “Love Song” and “Lover’s Day.” The biggest surprise comes from the tenth track, “DLZ,” which has an industrial-like ambiance and is angrier, darker, and more powerful than the rest of the tracks.

Already an experimental and ecstatic favorite of critics and fans everywhere, the band has evolved even further on this record to encompass more pop realms. Tunde Adebimpe’s vocals and lyrics are powerful in their poignancy and reflect his state of mind while writing the album (he suffered tragic loses of a friend and family member). We can hear Kyp Malone’s influences like Joy Division, The Cure, and Echo and the Bunnymen laced throughout the album.

Beautiful but mechanical, searing but sorrowful, tragic but happy, Dear Science celebrates life and imitates life in all its stages of emotion. It is tough to listen to “Stork and Owl” and not be moved to tears. It is tough to listen to “Red Dress” and not dance with both anger and joy. TV on the Radio takes us on a trip, and with the ending track, they “take you home” with the band’s best album to date.

Dear Science was released on September 23. Visit www.myspace.com/tvotr