Renowned for their sheer scope and gloriously unclassifiable 'out there'-ness, crack NYC troop TV ON THE RADIO have been blowing minds with regularity since the arrival of their 'Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes' debut back in 2004.
Although informed by dub and hard-hitting urban funk, that record remains a landmark of breathtaking stylistic scope and while 2006's 'Return To Cookie Mountain' was broadly a more linear, 'song'-based affair, it was still light years ahead of most of the competition.
So the good news is that TVOTR'S third, 'Dear Science' is anything but a 'difficult' third album. It finds them effortlessly maintaining their thrilling, otherworldly form and while their supersonic satellite might again be floating a little closer to a recognisable, song-based sun, most of what it beams in continues to sound like wonderfully strange news from another star.
Not that they're devoid of gettin' all infectious and poppy on our ass as and when the mood strikes, mind. Looming, drum-heavy and massive, opener 'Halfway Home' even throws an ecstatic dummy with its' cheeky, “fa fa fa fa fa fa” chant/ chorus a la The Ramones, although those remarkable, falsetto-tinged vocals (I think it's Tunde Adebimpe here, but Kyp Malone is amazing as well) are soon kicking in and taking it to another plane altogether.
Elsewhere, when TV give it up to the funk, they remain much closer in spirit to their urban, NYC roots than the slicker Sly Stone/ Chic brigade. Songs like 'Crying', 'Golden Age' and Kyp Malone's imploringly great, horn-addled 'Red Dress' hint at Talking Heads' dense, polyrythmic fusion (circa 'Remain In Light' and Byrne/ Eno's 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts') courtesy of the niggly guitars and African tinges, but such comparisons are fleeting at the best of times, and when stacked up against the surging, rap-tainted 'Dancing Choose' and the ratchety and aggressive guitars of 'Shout Me Out', you're in no doubt that TVOTR remain wildly distinctive sonic alchemists with an apothecary box full of ideas of their own.
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If anything, though, they are even more effective when they let the pace slacken a little. Malone's philosopical and quite glorious 'Stork & Owl' (“death's a door that love walks through...in and out, back and forth”) is supported by weeping strings; Adebimpe's deceptively mournful 'Love Dog' lugs a sack full of sorrow on its' back and ends with an orchestral dub coda (!) and the piano-based balled 'Family Tree' may be steeped in lyrical darkness (“in the shadows of the gallows of your family tree...there's a grave there and a place saved for me”) yet its' spiritual, redemptive arrangement positively soars. Along with the celebratory, virtual street parade atmosphere of the sexually-charged closer 'Lover's Day' it's among the very best music TVOTR have thus consigned to tape and that's saying something bearing in mind much of what has gone before under their flag.
'Dear Science', then, is a third triumph in a row for TV On The Radio, displaying yet another damn-near perfect distillation of technology, intelligence, burning blue soul and heady grooves. The inner sleeve's group shot reveals that Malone and Adebimpe's afros may have been pared back these days, but you shouldn't mistake that for impending Samson-style weakness. Their phenomenal creativity shows little sign of abating as yet.
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