Saturday night’s TV on the Radio showed a band motivated by their personal ambition and the political climate in which they’re working. Like the early days of U2, R.E.M. and more recent Radiohead albums, TV on the Radio combine politics and love and confusion without overpowering the audiences with melodrama or messiah complexes. Tunde Adebimpe fronts the band like a man possessed, borrowing liberally from Michael Stipe’s histrionic stage presence, often flailing as he sings. Lead guitarist Kyp Malone snarls menacingly at his side, providing the beautiful, dangerous harmonies that make TV on the Radio’s trademark sound so singularly gorgeous and urgent.
The energy and excitement they generate doesn’t come without sacrifices. The deft separation that defines the sound of Return to Cookie Mountain literally gets lost in the mix, resulting in a more uniform fuzztone undercurrent that enveloped Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes. But maybe that’s partly the point. For all the studio artistry in evidence on their new album, their rabid live performances are what win over fans in the end. In sum, TV on the Radio embody many of the qualities that were once understood, perhaps too simply in a now extinct format, as modern rock.
Grizzly Bear were better received in Philadelphia than they thought [via Blinq]. Their delicate sound didn’t exactly crystallize in the Starlight Ballroom’s onerous space, but they fared pretty well considering the less than pristine conditions. Their music, a combination of ethereal folk-twinged sounds, spectral vocals and quaint Fifties’ rock conventions, was a strange juxtaposition against TV on the Radio’s ferocity. Songs like “Knife” and “Central and Remote” accentuate how varied and dramatic their music is, incorporating such disparate touchstones into lush arrangements. However, the live setting did little to complement such fragile music, and if nothing else, live music often lifts the emperor’s robes in unflattering ways.