This is another ablsolute mind-blower from the ground-breaking, earth-shaking TV ON THE RADIO. Their second long player seethes and wrenches itself free from all attempts to catergorise it on pop's limited terms. An aggressive and prophetic schizophrenia occurs where once gravity may have defied; this is a record that you will either fully engage with, or back away from nervously.
Rising above evil, ultimately means that the spiritual quality of the music is still bigger than the conflict, as senses strain to take in the shifting sands of time and promises of a better life beyond this one. Yet the overall feel is that of a state of mind immersed in discordant, explosive, and psychotic rage. This is the sound of blood boiling.
Sitek’s production makes this a masterpiece of huge proportions. A sonic still-life of a fast evolving and constantly moving landscape that is almost completely given over to the muse and driven by improvisation. Capturing this is evidence of genius at work
Startlingly different from the more conventional, ambient beauty of their debut long-player ‘Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes’, the fractured, spluttering incoherent anger of the music is at superb odds with the poetry it echoes so deeply. Pastoral imagery and pathetic fallacy are just two features of lyrics that are perhaps best understood in literary terms.
The dark sub-bass of ‘I Was A Lover’ is the opposite extreme of Kyp Malones ethereal falsetto. Synthesised explosions from God only knows what simulate the horrors of carnage and holocaust and the ugly uncontrollable anger is a big enough reaction to match war/conflict on it’s own scale and terms. Here, the passive methods of peace campaigns are firmly placed in the past tense –“I was a lover”.
Apathy is the worst possible crime.
The drumstick count in to ‘Hours’ precedes a wailing and hypnotic tale of the emotional and metaphorical scrapheap. The underclass, the forgotten, letting yourself lose the will to struggle, insanity, delerium, the differences between fact and fiction, sifting the lies for truth. There is an ear to the ground exploration of all of this. Off-kilter sax echoes the crazed extremities, and we are reminded of the tragic aspect of becoming a fatal casualty of war before self-awareness has enlightened the soul.
Autumn leaves, and pastoral imagery litter Malone’s hypnotic poetry during ‘Province’. David Bowie’s multi-instrumental contribution soundtracks the examination of change, history, memories “precious as gold” in an ever disintegrating world. Infinity lies in the high key of the piano that hammers out the spaciousness of the night skies. It’s a spaced out jam about conquering fear, and our first glimmer of hope in a helplessly dissolving world of evil and self-hatred.
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Drum patterns intensifiy, along with the overload of dark, dark melodies. Assertive, defiant, the anger is about to explode/implode from this seething record at the end of its tether, when it suddenly unleashes the raw power of pure white rage. ‘Wolf like Me’ seems to title itself!
The handclapping, eerie whistling & cymbals of ‘A Method’ makes a more organic jam, but with the ‘pots and pans’ percussion of the synth reduced to the basics, there’s a sterilised, surgical feel. Eerie. As the tapping, mumbling synths gradually regain their hold they make a barbed wire fence for CELEBRATION vocalist Katrina Ford’s incantations to bleed over. During ‘Let the Devil In’, even the pastoral is darkening and densely textured. TVOTR have ‘had it up to here’ with rose-coloured visions of the past.
Dramatic, hollow sampled, urgent, building and prophetic, this is no picnic, but the music is mind-blowing. Adebimpe’s vocals also tremor with emotion during ‘Blues from down here’, and ‘Tonight’ is deathly, all wind-chiming ambience with Malone’s voice pushed so far to the front of the mix it could be accapella. Heroin addiction equals fading options, hollowed out from within.
“Your busted heart will be fine/ In its tell-tale time”
‘Wash The Day’ brings this lurching, grinding overload to the only natural conclusion. This record has so many qualities; as a protest album it stands completely alone in terms of sheer passion.
http://www.myspace.com/tvotr
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