Over two years since their astonishing 2006 album Return to Cookie Mountain, New York avant garde standard-bearers TV on the Radio have announced the title and release date for their third album. Dear Science, is due September 23 on Interscope and yes, the comma is indeed part of the title. (UPDATE: 4AD will release the album on September 22 outside of the U.S.)

Sweet!

As previously reported, TVOTR have a slate of September shows lined up, including performances at the Monolith, Street Scene, and Treasure Island festivals. Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson will open several dates.

TV on the Radio:

09-05 Portland, OR - Roseland *
09-06 Seattle, WA - Showbox *
09-07 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom *
09-09 Calgary, Alberta - MacEwan Ballroom *
09-10 Edmonton, Alberta - Starlite Room *
09-12 Boise, ID - Knitting Factory *
09-13 Salt Lake City, UT - In the Venue *
09-14 Morrison, CO - Red Rocks (Monolith Festival)
09-19 San Diego, CA - Street Scene
09-20 San Francisco, CA - Treasure Island Festival

* with Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

Already got my ticket.

TV on the Radio is decent, I'll probably download this.

tits. sept is lookin like a good month for new music.

definitely tits. i spun cookie mountain the other day and fully enjoyed the experience.

I couldn't be more pleased by this news.

1. "Halfway Home"
2. "Crying"
3. "Dancing Chose"
4. "Stork & Owl"
5. "Golden Age"
6. "Family Tree"
7. "Red Dress"
8. "Love Dog"
9. "Shout Me Out"
10. "DLZ"
11. "Lover’s Day"

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/i ... r-science/

First Listen: TV on the Radio’s Art-Rock Symphony “Dear Science”

7/29/08, 4:24 pm EST

Last week, Rolling Stone nabbed a first listen to TV on the Radio’s excellent Dear Science, due out September 23rd. Produced by the group’s multi-instrumentalist Dave Sitek, the album finds the Brooklyn group fine-tuning what they did best on 2006’s Return to Cookie Mountain: tweaking and looping and distorting a grand arsenal of aggressive percussion, new wave synths, epic guitar noise and various kitchen-sink devices, then layering them all into a big, beautiful art-rock symphony.

But of all the instruments on the new record, the most compelling one is Tunde Adebimpe’s voice. On the blazing anthem “Dancing Choose,” which sounds like TV on the Radio’s answer to R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” the rhythm of his words pound like a beating drum: “I’ve seen my palate blown to monochrome, hollow heart clicks hollow tone.” Album opener “Halfway Home” begins with a guitar riff that recalls Cookie single “Wolf Like Me,” but as a Smiths-like melody kicks in, Adebimpe delivers the lyrics with the dreamy, sing-song quality of a nursery rhyme.

Of course, bandmate Kyp Malone has got some pipes too — especially on the funky R&B track “Cryin’,” where his falsetto rivals Prince’s. Thematically, Dear Science addresses similar themes to Cookie Mountain — namely, that these might feel like End Times, but love can get you through them. And the bands’ Brooklyn friends help drive that message home: members of the Afro-funk group Antibalas lend some golden horn rave-ups to “Red Dress” and Katrina Ford of the Celebration delivers lovely harmonies on the orchestral closer “Lover’s Day.” Over marching-band drums, sleigh bells, hand claps and distorted horn loops, her voice dovetails nicely with Malone’s as they sing, “Swear to God we’ll get so high we’ll melt our faces off.” And the sentiment is right-on: this creative tour-de-force could be an epic drug album, too.

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1003834607

TV On The Radio Keeps Exploring On 'Science'

August 01, 2008 , 5:40 PM ET
Cortney Harding, N.Y.

TV On The Radio incorporates grander, more orchestral arrangements into its David Bowie-influenced sound on its new album, "Dear Science," due Sept. 23 via Interscope.

Opener "Halfway Home" features strong drumming built around a simple beat, with Tunde Adebimpe's falsetto vocals masking downbeat subject matter. "Family Tree" has lush, soaring strings and tender lyrics, while "Red Dress" makes ample use of a horn section

Parts of "Crying" could be mistaken for a straight disco track, while "Dancing Choose" and "DLZ" feature soaring vocalizations more in line with System Of A Down's Serj Tankian. "Golden Age" not only riffs on one of Bowie's song titles but is also a clear homage to the glammiest aspects of his 1970s sound.

Erotic closer "Lover's Day" seems to channel early Prince, and with lyrics like "I'm going to make you come," and "get off, get off," the track refutes a Jezebel blogger's assertion that men in Williamsburg "aren't very assertive."

I like how album release dates aren't getting announced 6 months in advance anymore. It's out next month, should leak soon, I'll be looking forward to it.

Yeah, if RS and Billboard have already heard it then it's probably only two weeks off leaking.

The cover art is OK.

A buddy of mine mentioned going to see them in October. Hmmm...

i'll let you know how it goes here in early sept.

actually, why wait, you should just go.

There’s no shortage of intricate, atonal layers, shimmering vocals and sonic explosions of the thrillingly unexpected on TV On The Radio’s third album, Dear Science. But when DiS headed out to the 4AD offices for a too-brief first listen, we were genuinely surprised by what we heard. The effects – drums, strings, synth (a lot of synth) – are shinier than ever, against a sinister backdrop of feedback and fuzz. The vocals are alternately sexier and angrier. And the beats are unrepentantly funky. It’s like the boys have gathered the glammest riffs of three-decades-ago Bowie and Prince and fed them through some mysterious, apocalyptic sound machine – also known as the virtuoso production factory of David Andrew Sitek. All hail their dark vision of the future.

1 ‘Halfway Home’
The glorious, up-tempo opener bursts into your eardrums like a 4am festival epiphany. Pulsing synth, echoey handclaps and euphoric “ba-ba-ba” chanting give way to subdued vocals – a simple, low melody, with plenty of richness and reverb. Soaring chords kick in alongside Kyp Malone’s falsetto as the chanting, clapping and squizzy effects pile back in, building to a triumphant, thrumming close. Then a long fade, like the airlock closing on your last-ever view of Earth as your spaceship blasts into the unknown.

2 ‘Crying’
The unknown seems to sound a bit like Prince circa 1987 – as futuristic as anything recorded in the last 100 years, then. A high funk guitar and super-’80s drum machine back swoon-worthy vocals (“I got you cryyyyy-ing”) while fuzzy feedback fades in and out. At the end, a trumpet and keyboard exchange words over a simple descending melody. I think the keyboard wins.

3 ‘Dancing Choose’
Blimey! There’s some loud, furious dub fuzz going on here. We’re straight in with a shout, nearly a shriek: “He’s a what, he’s a what, he’s a newspaper man… He can’t understand that he’s not in command; his decisions are written by the cash in his hand”. Lightning-clap eighth notes thwack at the end of each bar; a guitar line twines itself moistly into your eardrum. Oh, this is more like it: “In my mind I’m counting butterflies” goes the (relatively) gentle chorus. Uh-oh, now he’s back to spitting rapid-fire about “angry young men”. The glorious chorus of braying horns that kick in at the end are as much warning as celebration.

4 ‘Stork & Owl’
The intro splices ‘I Was A Lover’ with ‘Darling Nikki’ – but years after the grind, when Nikki’s despondent and facing an existential crisis. “Faceless, I fall from this life” go the sorrowful, spacey vocals as Kyp slides between his punchy lower register and the odd falsetto syllable with breathtaking, virtuoso ease. Plucked strings alternate with soaring, sometimes saccharine chords. Submit to the dark, swelling waves of sound and it’s like sinking gently to the bottom of the sea in a steel bubble, à la Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic.

5 ‘Golden Age’
A throbbing bassline, brassy cymbal and farting synth signal that the party proper starts here. A tender verse builds and swells until out of nowhere, woozy, mind-bending synth and vocals kick in, swirling up and around with no regard whatsoever for the rules of tonal composition. Flashgun pop references slip in and out like shadows, disappearing almost before you’re sure what you’ve heard: ‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough’ echoes in a vocal rhythm; ‘Heroes’ shimmers in a euphoric, fleeting interlude; there’s some Talking Heads floating around the quieter moments. Glorious.

6 ‘Family Tree’
This is Arthur Russell territory: over an anthemic, über-echoey keyboard intro, a low voice sings of “echoing moonlight”, each caught breath and rested beat resonating as loudly as the note that follows. The gorgeously gothic image of “the shadow of the gallows of your family tree” is invoked over and over as piano, bouncy strings, vocals, shimmery synth and gentle soft-rock drums fade in and out. They’re staggered into rounds with quiet precision, like the kaleidoscopic shadow cast by late-afternoon sunlight as it shifts across a stained-glass window.

7 ‘Red Dress’
High, jangly guitars, bouncy bass and a relentless snare-heavy beat whisk you swiftly from stillness into a heady, sinister danse macabre. There are dark allusions to “the ploughshare and the sword” and an invitation, or maybe a demand, to “come pay witness to the whore of Babylon”. Horns, marimbas, cowbells and all manner of jungly squawks and clatters fill the air like mosquitoes, only to be cleared away by a kick-ass cymbal clash straight out of Kool & the Gang.

8 ‘Love Dog’
Here’s a subdued return to …Cookie Mountain form. “I’m only a little love dog that no one knows the name of,” Kyp laments, over quietly urgent drum pulses and low-register keyboard noodling. There’s a mournful horn line, like the coda of a military funeral march, that gives way to lush harp and then beautifully grating strings. Kyp’s wordless keening, which sounds disembodied even at its most tangible moments, degenerates into a ghostly series of echoes and imagined reverberations.

9 ‘Shout Me Out’
Against a spare background of relentlessly throbbing 16th notes and the odd echoey glissando, Kyp throws a curve ball, his voice swinging with almost loungey syncopation, then submerged by a clattering four-to-the-floor chorus. It ends on a nifty wammy-barred guitar solo that’s quietly noodled along for most of the song and winds down like the last jangly bars of ‘Diamond Dogs’. I’m not sure if it’s a dud or three and a half minutes of genius.

10 ‘DLZ’
A trip-hoppy beat meanders down some shadowy path towards ominous, drawn-out chords; they could as easily be the swelling, wordless cries of ancient mourners. Out-of-breath vocals spit esotericisms with intent: “the dog wants a bone”, “the dog’s lost a lead”. Sweet opiate choruses blow through like smoke but, by the end, it’s crashed into a relentless, solipsistic refrain that seems to go on forever. In the uneasy stillness of the last few bars, menace remains.

11 ‘Lover's Day’
Crisp sleigh bells open with the innocence of a Christmas carol, but what follows is a roll call of pomp and glory. Thundering timpani and throaty vocals burst in at measure three; four sees marching drumbeats shoulder their way to the front, followed by the crystalline vocals of Katrina Ford of Celebration like some apocalyptic angel. Every instrument, every breath, every beat builds to a euphoric high and then drops, mid-song, only to build slowly and teasingly again in a drawn-out climax. Abrasive Roxy Music woodwinds, clashing cymbals, military-precise snares, trilling clarinets and pounding brass – a whole American football field’s worth of marching-band instrumentation snaps to wild-eyed, hypnotic attention. “Yes, of course there are miracles,” Kyp intones. You better believe it.

that's what I'm thinking. I hadn't listened to them in a while but I've got Return to Cookie Mountain on this morning and I thought wait, what the fuck am I thinking?

If he drives I have no problem paying the $18 or whatever to see them.

they're playing here in october, too, i'm going to try to see it.

DiS,

There are two vocalists in TV On The Radio.

zeb

no comma
i was punkd