On a recent Monday, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone — the dual frontmen of TV on the Radio — are lounging backstage at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre, chowing down on crab cakes and clam chowder for lunch. Topics of conversation include the election, Jay-Z and a phenomenon both guys find a little strange: getting approached on the street by random fans. “Whenever a stranger calls me by name,” Malone says, “I wonder, ‘Did I meet this person when I was drunk?’”
Malone and Adebimpe better get used to the attention. Dear Science, the Brooklyn quintet’s fourth album, debuted at Number 12 on the charts; a coup for an arty band that’s one of America’s most ambitious. Crowds have grown larger. Letterman and Leno are calling. Girls are coming to the shows.
Dear Science isn’t exactly Radio Disney stuff — Afro-beat rhythms and intricate electronic textures courtesy of producer-guitarist Dave Sitek are prominent — but it’s catchier and more danceable than the dense electronic noise of the band’s first few records. “We just wanted to make our version of a dance record,” says Adebimpe.
With three samplers and four horn players (plus guitars and drums), TVOTR tear into extended funk-laden versions of Science cuts like “Golden Age.” Offstage, they’re pretty mellow. Each member is in his 30s and tries to eat right and sleep well. Entertainment on the road is low-key: For Adebimpe, it’s watching DVDs of the Errol Morris interview series. Drummer Jaleel Bunton likes to jog. “Let’s just say we’re not Mötley Crüe,” says Bunton.
Backstage in Boston, Malone tells a story about the band eating mushrooms “by the handful” during a tour of Europe a few years ago. “I went swimming in the Mediterranean,” he says. “And I saw a vision of a death head surrounded by seraphim.” Malone says he has no plans to repeat the experience. Adebimpe concurs: “Oh, God, no.”
Two days after the Boston show, TVOTR gather in the basement of the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, having just played the second of three sold-out hometown gigs. They drink Stella and talk warmly with friends, family and girlfriends. Being home, if only briefly, makes Adebimpe a little wistful. “There are people at these shows who were there in the early days,” he says, referring to the small, messy gigs half a decade ago, back when TVOTR were just a half-serious recording project. “I want to say to those people, ‘Fuck, I can’t believe what’s happened either.’ “
The biggest TV on the Radio song of 2008 is, like many of the band’s songs, about romantic disappointment. The vocals are high-pitched and anguished, yet certain. Keyboards are played with slight imperfections that sound as if they were born of frustration. At the hook, the piece bursts alive with martial percussion, giving it an appealing bulk.
Whether Mr. West, the cool-hunting hip-hop superstar, had those Brooklyn art-rockers in mind when he recorded that song, the first single from his forthcoming fourth album, “808s & Heartbreaks,” isn’t known. And it’s possible that something from TV on the Radio’s third album, the recently released “Dear Science” (DGC/Interscope), might slither its way to pop acclaim.
But for now this band, which began a sold-out three-night stand at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple on Tuesday night, might be gaining more clout as an influence, a group revered by others, than as a success of its own. (The new album sold 34,000 copies in its first week, a small number, though still the band’s best showing to date.)
Maybe that’s because TV on the Radio often feels as if it’s looking, and playing, inward, demanding others to engage the group on its own terms. On Tuesday the band put on a serious-minded and intense show that was at times exuberant and at times overly studious.
But it never lacked for technical fluency. Tunde Adebimpe, the lead vocalist, was a dynamo. While the rest of the band largely remained still, he practically vibrated around the stage, his shuffling somehow rhythmic and awkward all at once. Visually and sonically, he was the band’s tension and its ecstasy — whistling and cooing at the outset of “Young Liars,” making his singing almost raplike on “Dancing Choose,” and crawling slowly and cleanly out of the band’s distortion on “Halfway Home.”
Kyp Malone handles most of the rest of the band’s vocals, his flat rasp a balance to Mr. Adebimpe’s spacey croon. On “Crying” he barked and howled, and on “Dreams” he sang glorious, punchy countermelodies while Mr. Adebimpe soared above him.
Given that it has two distinctive singers, it’s noteworthy that TV on the Radio prefers to envelop them in walls of noise: density is the calling card of this band, which also includes Dave Sitek, who produces the band’s music (as usual, he played the guitar generally with his back to the audience); Gerard Smith, who plays bass and keyboards; and the drummer Jaleel Bunton. (In places, the band was joined by a horn section: tenor and alto sax, trombone, trumpet.)
Few if any working rock bands have the rhythmic intelligence of TV on the Radio, and the interplay between Mr. Smith and Mr. Bunton was firm and vivid, especially on “Wolf Like Me,” on which they applied the brakes and brought the frenetic song to a slow melt. On “Satellite” Mr. Bunton played rapid-fire, brute-force patterns that shaped the rest of the song, forcing everyone else in line.
“Dear Science,” from which much of the show’s material was drawn, contains this band’s peppiest songs to date, including a handful of psychedelic disco-soul numbers (“Shout Me Out,” “Golden Age”) that didn’t quite translate here. And the moody “Love Dog” felt hollow and lagged a bit.
But the band shone on older songs. “The Wrong Way” marched with industrial skronk, and “A Method” was solemn, underpinned by Mr. Smith, whose melodies recalled a church organ, and Mr. Sitek, who furiously beat on timpani. The band closed with “Staring at the Sun,” the highlight of its first album and still among its best songs. Mr. Adebimpe’s falsetto vocals were improbably smooth. Mr. Smith’s bass gave the song thickness. And when Mr. Bunton burst through the thicket with his formidable drumming, it suggested a band in complete ownership of its sound, wherever it may roam.
