#9

TV on the Radio
Return to Cookie Mountain
(Interscope)

The holy My Bloody Valentine name is tossed around a ton these days, at pretty much anything that will categorize easily as “overtly distorted” or “effects laden”, which sometimes includes TV on the Radio. It’s a shame and lazy on any reviewer’s part. Loveless isn’t a meaningful album because of its innovative use of the distortion and volume knob. If that were the case, then there never would’ve been Velvet Underground’s White Light, White Heat. Rather, it was a record that took suffocated and nebulous yet very melodic songwriting and buried that sound under countless layers of discordant noise. In that sense, the MBV comparison only vaguely warranted, but even then, not so much so. In reality the only space they share is that of fantastic songwriters and visionaries of their own craft.

TV on the Radio exist in a sphere all their own. It’s a virtual junkyard of pop music incorporating doo wop, R&B, electronica, balls out rock, and other cast-off detritus. It’s a sound that’s unavoidably “urban”. Like any big city the disjointed and unfamiliar are braced up against one another. Rather than jump out in alarming juxtaposition, Return to Cookie Mountain is a sound of the unfamiliar yet undeniably exciting smoothly coexisting.