Dear Science, TV on the Radio’s follow-up to 2006’s Return to Cookie Mountain—a dense and textural album with an optimistic core—is catchier, but thornier than its predecessor. Musically, it’s an instant grabber: Handclaps crack like fireworks. TVOTR’s horns, courtesy of the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, sound punchier and brighter than ever before. Vocalists Tunde Adebimpe and guitarist/singer Kyp Malone thrive as dual frontmen: They’re sexy when they're angry, and even sexier when they’re not. And David Sitek’s production is shiny and urgent, while his harsher synths and doo-dads hang back like a commentary track.
But making popular music sits uneasily with this art-rock crew, and so although this is TV on the Radio’s slickest, catchiest, and potentially most popular LP, it nevertheless reeks with dread. Lyrics about the dead, death, and dying litter the album from its second line onward. Songs with sentimental titles carry the most dire lyrics—like “Family Tree,” a gorgeous ballad about forbidden love whose titular plant becomes a gallows. And the lyrics to “Red Dress” are almost childishly pouty. Assuming the role of industry-bred stars, TVOTR complain that instead of waving collective fists in the air, listeners are merely getting down to their Prince-like guitars and brash brass: “They got you tamed, and they got me tamed.” But the self-hatred makes it engaging: “I’m living a life not worth dying for.”
The promise of dancing away all your troubles hangs over every sweaty note, until TVOTR happily yank it away. On “Dancing Choose,” the big chorus and synth power-chords interrupt the funk and double-time vocals to remind us this is a rock band, prone to making big statements. See also “DLZ,” a half-rap, half-primal scream from Adebimpe that sounds like it’s aimed at every figure of power in the world. But how do they follow that? With a big brash song about fucking. Anthemic horns and parade drums treat the whole thing like a football pep rally, “I’m gonna take you, I’m gonna shake you, I’m gonna make you cum.” That could be their most transparent lyric yet.
“Shout Me Out” is the only cut that reveals any unselfconscious joy. With a chorus that borrows well from Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” it comes the closest to the raw sound of their past works: Repetitive guitar and a chiming synth loop introduce Adebimpe singing a gentle verse, as the song builds to a fantastic, frenetic release and the electric guitar crackles and rails along. This is familiar territory for them—and they get out fast.
Yes, this is shit-hot thrilling music. But it’s also brainy and ambivalent, and more engaging for it. TV on the Radio remain a true Event Band, and the sign o’ the times they capture here isn’t audacious hope, or fierce revolution: It’s confusion. They’re the house band for a country that has no idea what’ll hit it next, and Dear Science is a jagged landscape of self-doubt, Bush-hate, and future-fear. And once in a while, you still get some of their optimism. Take the first single and the album’s fulcrum, “Golden Age,” which ice skates to heaven on billowing horns, sweet swirling strings, a video that stars harmless dancing cops, and Malone’s falsetto. Malone has said it’s about “utopia.” And he sings like he still believes in it. But he has nothing to back him up but the beat.
