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Interscope
September 12, 2006 |
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TV On The Radio
Return to Cookie Mountain
Filter Grade: 94%
by CHRIS MARTINS
This is not an album. It's a manifesto or a mood; a statement or a lifestyle. It all depends on which side of the “art fence” you fall on: Are you consumer or contributor? Cynic or romantic? Taken in from afar (the cynic's view), Return to Cookie Mountain is a declaration painted in broad strokes; a collection of sounds and words and heaviness and freedom that congeals to form fightin' words (band to world: “Surrender your tawdry artists and factory-line bands. We've come to reclaim Cookie Mountain for the dreamers!”). Witnessed up close (the view of the romantic), TV on the Radio's opus is familiar and warm like a hug, but energizing instead of pacifying. It's a rallying cry carved out of pure passion (band to world: “Abandon your workaday reveries and find your medium. Create! Create! Create!”). The point is: This isn't an album; it means a lot more. And no matter your vantage point, the sight of it better light a fire under your ass.
TV on the Radio have had a relatively brief amount of time to make an impression on us, but make one they have. 2003's Young Liars EP was a densely packed brick of swarming sound. David Sitek and Tunde Adebimpe threw everything they had against the plywood walls of their loft space, scraped up whatever stuck, jammed it into 25 minutes, and left us reeling. Their debut LP Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes was impressive, but not as spectacular: the sound of a band (they'd expanded to five members) feeling their way toward their own potential while still swooning us into fantasyland. TV on the Radio were learning their limits--but only so they could eventually break them.
Welcome to Cookie Mountain. For the faint of heart it might be a tough climb (Sitek recently told Filter, “Easy is the one thing we don't do.”), but those who make it will be rewarded like Moses on the Mount. There isn't a song on here not worth mentioning. Each is inspired and alive, a standalone work but also a part of the greater composition. “I Was a Lover” begins the album with a blast of electronic bass-drum kicks topped by a snare smash while the guitar in the back shimmers like a sitar. A cut-short sample of an orchestra blurts the sound of bending metal in polyrhythmic pulse with the beat, and this is only the first five seconds. As Kyp Malone spins a falsetto tale of innocence lost in times of war, the song becomes a syncopated stew of beauty and static and drums and dub. It's music like we've never heard, and it continues.
“Hours” is the gorgeous counterpoint to the closing chaos of the opener. It's sparse, open wide, and instantly calming. From the tiny organ tone that pierces the momentary silence between tracks to the dark cello/bass combo that drives the come-down even deeper, it's a ghostly trip. Tunde shares a duet with Blonde Redhead's buzz-saw squeaker Kazu; Jaleel Bunton plays drums, guitar and piano; David's flute sounds like glass. And then comes “Province,” towing with it a divinely soulful pop and none other than David Bowie. TV on the Radio's two vocalists trade dusty croons with the Duke, soaring into the chorus: “Hold your heart courageously/As we walk into this dark place/...love is the province of the brave.” It's a more-than-fitting declaration.
“Playhouses” bounces forth on a loose and dubby bassline (thanks to Gerard Smith) while Jaleel attacks the drums like he's splitting time between Tortoise and Bad Brains. Studio trickery congests the sound into something that can be turned on and off (a la Odd Nosdam) and the song goes out in a wash of doom. Cookie Mountain's creamy center starts with “Wolf like Me” and ends with “A Method.” The first is founded on a bed of punk-pop quilted with a textured 3-D guitar collage and made simultaneously menacing and welcoming by Tunde's affected snarl/croon. The second is a Brian Wilson-esque exercise in intricately layered harmony (helmed by Tunde) and broken free-flowing poetry. Underneath the words is a tempest of percussion: what sounds like an army of pots, pans, typewriters, handclaps and horseshoes.
We could go on, but you'd have nothing left to look forward to--the anarchic drumfest sing-along that is “Let the Devil In;” the seductive pull of “Dirty Whirl”; the hollow and spiritual “Blues from Down Here,” the haunting and stark “Tonight;” and the epic closing plateau, “Wash the Day Away.” Aside from klezmer, there's hardly a musical style, movement or idea not siphoned through RTCM. As an artistic achievement, it ranks incredibly high on the list of great postmodern statements. Here is a piece of music (but oh so much more) that proves that something new can be done, and it can be entirely engaging. At first listen there will be moments of impenetrability, but there's so much incentive to return--and return, and return--that there's plenty of time for the remaining secrets to reveal themselves.
As the idea of the artist--the thinker, the sculptor, the painter, the poet--folds in on itself like a runaway supernova, we celebrate the snake oil salesman and the bullshit vendor all too easily. It's not even a matter of taste anymore; it's an overbearing amount of sameness telling us to buy our culture from the great homogenization in the sky, overspreading our country like a blanket of vellum. It's no longer enough to accept just enough air to hold our breaths steady; we have to gasp for the stars. TV on the Radio are all of those once-lofty archetypes, and Return to Cookie Mountain deftly and naturally channels their legacy into sound. This is not an album. And what it means to you can actually make all the difference. (TV on the Radio to world: “Suck it.”)
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