3. TV on the Radio - Dear Science,

In 2006 I proclaimed TVotR's breakthrough Return to Cookie Mountain as my favourite of the year. An elaborate masterpiece overfilling with dense textures and ambitious ideas, it elevated TVotR well above the underground scene; and perhaps they have become America's unofficial indie house band - their precise, pointed lyrics a political and social commentary tempered by obfuscating imagery and allegory. Unravelling over the course of dozens of listens, it slowly revealed its quietly optimistic core, and still tells a new chapter each spin. We all wondered how this lavish opus could be topped, but TVotR have cleverly taken on a leaner, catchier sound; and the greatness of Dear Science, has much to do with how effortlessly natural the band does it while still surprising us.
From the get-go, opener Halfway Home sprints off on a fusillade of streaking guitars and house beats. On the way to Lover's Day - TVotR's most brash, cocky yet sensual closer, featuring Celebration's Katrina Ford - they take us on a thrilling course through a ragged landscape encompassing a multitude of genres. David Sitek tackles the production with usual aplomb, veering away from the requisite organic spaciousness of Cookie Mountain to a lush crystalline clarity that eases, rather than bore its way, into one's head. The production values reflect an apparent compartmentalization of the band's myriad sounds, previously fused in a fuzzy experimental haze. Afrobeat funk gives way to synth fuzz chords, anthemic violin swells and epic guitar noise washes build up to climatic horn passages courtesy of the Antibalas Orchestra. Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone are in outstanding form, complementing each other perfectly whether whispering, sighing, rapping, growling or crooning.
The new lightness in music initially suggests a lighter mood as well. On the brilliant Golden Age, Adebimpe awaits an age of miracle and sound, singing, without a trace of irony, "love's light is laughter / like the sun spittin' happiness into the hereafter". The pun in Dancing Choose's title falls in line with it's musings on "breeding butterflies, broken dreams and alibis", espousing the obvious catharsis of dancing on one's troubles. The very comma in Dear Science, seems to suggest an open-ended realm of positive possibility. But - perhaps as should have been expected of TVotR - this facade of hope and embrace turns out to belie a thorny record with even darker reflections on dread and death. Family Tree's titular plant proves to be a gallows for some forbidden love, DLZ cynically ponders the pitfalls of capitalism - so apt in view of the current economic crisis - while Crying turns the album's catchiest song on its head to mock a generation crippled by laziness and apathy.
On Red Dress, so resplendent in its tribal rap and horns arrangement, Malone cries, "**** your war / 'cos I'm fat and in love / and no bombs are fallin' on me for sure / But I'm scared to death / that I'm livin' a life not worth dying for". This emotional undercurrent keeps Dear Science,'s brainy, if endearing, ambivalence in check. TVotR sonically capture the sheer confusion, self-doubt, and fear of the future of a nation at a precipe; and extend a global invitation to find solace and release in music. Dear Science, stands in the eye of the storm, and, well, once in awhile some of that starry-eyed optimism still comes through.

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so goes the backing track of all the sighs we ever sighed