wordplay by Samantha Donen

The fact that David Bowie sings on this album, at all, was enough reason for me to rush to the store and buy TV On The Radio’s sophomore album Return To Cookie Mountain.  Yet again, Bowie did not let me down. He turned me onto the psychedelic pop of now, which TV On The Radio appears to be pioneering. I say “appears” because I hear a lot of Bowie and Prince influences in TOTR’s music, and that is not a bad thing at all. It is just not new. What is new about their music is that weird suddenly sounds good. Take “The Province,” for example. It sounds like they were hanging around a piano, and everyone decided to sing whenever they felt like it…in whatever key felt right. Let’s say, this piano was in Africa and some African drummer was playing the whole time in the background. And, of course, someone kept bumping into a keyboard that would blast these interludes of electronic beats and samples. Polish it all off with a reverb button that accidentally got left on as an overhead mic in the recording process and that is what that song sounds like. Still, Bowie was involved and that is all that matters here folks.

March 20th @ The Ogden

TVontheRadio.com