Top 8 of 2008 Part IV
Gazza Strip's Pick:
TV on the Radio - "Halfway Home"
(Enjoy The Science)
If TV on the Radio came out about 15 years ago, chances are we'd be looking at them now the same way we did with a band like the Pixies in the late 80s/early 90s. How'd we miss them the first go round? We'd say. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), being a head of your time doesn't really exist anymore in today's ever expansive and accessible musical society. The rates and frequencies at which music changes hands/hard drives is astronomical and because there's so much of it, when a band sticks out above the rest of the pack - it's ever the more noticeable.
When 5 dudes from Brooklyn, NY released their debut album in 2001 called, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (of all things) I bet they didn't think their blend of avant-garde/experimental rock would light the torch for college rockers to indie brats which they would carry ever so high throughout nearly an entire decade... and the flame burns higher, brighter. Of course there are those on the sidelines who don't get it yet, and I don't entirely blame them. For a band who self-describes their music as "a'ccapella" and "surf barber shop rap" its not exactly something you'd associate with pleasant music listening experiences (unless you were dealing in game show land and Carmen SanDiego herself, was standing at the helm). Then again, I tried to dislike them, I really did, but the last time I tried to do that with a Brooklyn-based band, I am now 3 concerts, 3 albums, 2 band interviews and 1 NYC stalking experience away from buying a black Armani suit with a white tie and naming my future never-born daughter, Stella. But for all that was talked about our good friend, Girl Talk this year - who has become the recent equivalent to Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers - if that's the case, then TVotR's Dear Science is 2008's Purple Rain. But in place of Prince's pink and purple fusion is a smattering of dark bloody, maroon with 1,000 shades of gray. TVotR's music - and Dear Science in particular - runs the gamut of epic and majestic, bringing the sounds of the gutters to street surface, spraying all its brutal ugly in throaty hyper-drama, so we can survey the worms and guts and pray that beyond all hope, a tiny flower might sprout from beneath it all. And so it does...
"Halfway Home" as chosen by our dear friend Gaz was/is how he described it on first listen - "a punch to the face." A good way to summarize the current crop of annual critics picks where there's little separation from the mainstream and the underground (Check Pitchfork vs. Billboard this year and you'll find little difference in choices). We as music listeners should be perturbed that our parent's music is making it to number 1 and I'm talking about Fleet Foxes (who I admire quite much), but are nothing more than Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young disguised in beards and flannel. "Is it not me? Am I not folded by your touch? The words you spoke/I know too much/It's over now/And not enough" the words of TVotR's Tunde Adebimpe provide a more profound outlook on the goings-on of this curtain reveal, and as much as we should wait for another greasy blonde-haired brat from Aberdeen or a few lager louts from Manchester to save the day, we don't have to because history is already being rewritten as we speak...
...And you're the one who holds the pen now... or um, mouse button.
This person also liked: Walter Meego, Human Highway and Ray LaMontagne
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