I'm not a spiritual person, nor am I easily moved by musical sentiment; a sort of innately critical shell forces me to appreciate sincere artistic outpourings from a distance in order to more fully examine them. Critics have to understand and express with seemingly imagined words like "luminous" what listeners will often simply feel in terms more like "awesome." We're not immune to the "awesome" bug, though, and we still discover certain records that not only disarm our battery of well-honed defenses, but raze them to the ground. For TV on the Radio, all it took was Tunde Adebimpe's sterling, gospel-blues croon, a solitary voice multi-tracked into a gorgeous three-part harmony containing multitudes: "Hear me hailing from inside and realize/ I am the conscience clear." A rapid, mechanized pulse of clicks lend insistence to his suggestion that time is short: "We were all weaned, my dear/ Upon the same fatigue."
A massive confluence of factors-- masterful levels, nearly too-crisp production, and David Andrew and Jason Sitek's beautifully translucent arrangements-- conspire to allow Adebimpe's vocals to shine, diffuse and radiant, as the stunning centerpiece of every track on Young Liars. Bands have played up singers in the past, but here, the single-minded focus of every musical element seems designed purely to elevate the vocal melodies out of the realm of the merely "real" and into the hyper-real. It's the spirituality and soul of the blues filtered through barbershop harmonies, but accompanied in counterpoint by dehumanized pulses and drones. Without hyperbole, the effect is electrifyingly direct, nearly mesmerizing, and nothing quite like anything else I can recall.
Adebimpe and the Siteks are currently only playing AAA ball in the New York PR farm system, but in preparation for their call-up to the Big Show, it doesn't hurt that they've befriended the three-, four- and five-hitters in the Brooklyn All-Stars line-up: Aaron Hemphill (Liars), Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and Brian Chase (also Yeahs). The guests make their presence known in subtle but unmistakable ways. Zinner's trademark, tremulant surf-waves are the vital undercurrent of "Staring at the Sun", while his low-register distortions lay the foundation of "Blind" in drugged-out slow motion-- atop Chase's loping mechanics, he creates a grim, plodding backdrop in stark contrast to the chorus' heavenly reprises, compellingly tarnishing the optimism of the gorgeous vocals with just a hint of uncertainty. Adebimpe is plaintive and almost impossibly haunting here, but the jagged tears of Hemphill's guitar, distant enough to sound two studios away, sends the song blissfully over the edge.
On this disc, in which every song bears the weighty finality to close, TV on the Radio provide a surreal bonus track: an a cappella cover of the Pixies' "Mr. Grieves". Like a streetcorner serenade, it's got all the oooh's, aaah's, handclaps and snaps of classic doo-wop, and yet it somehow remains brilliantly, unwaveringly faithful to the original. As the song spins out its last few seconds, Young Liars ends just as it starts, with such an immediately affecting resonance for which words seem almost unfair, if only because the time needed to consciously process them seems a frustrating juxtaposition to the spontaneity of the connection to something so unique. With this kind of sound, it's telling that TV on the Radio finish by covering one of the most idolized bands in independent music; it's a bold calling card for their upcoming full-length.
