TV ON THE RADIO IS BACK

The Brooklyn hipster band played NYC with LA and London coming soon

Back around 2002 or ‘03 Sia Michel, a good friend who was then the editor of Spin magazine, told me I should go to a show at the Mercury Lounge to see a band called TV On the Radio. They were one of the bands coming out of Williamsburg that were making noise on the hipster scene that was the new century’s hottest trend. I was dubious. I lived on the other side of the Brooklyn Navy yard, but that seemed like the other side of the world from where I resided in Fort Greene. That scene appeared very white and deeply self-conscious. The whole hipster hype seemed corny.

But Michel told me they were a mostly black band, so I was curious. I decided not to look at any videos or listen to the music. Lemme go in here clean. Well the band was a revelation. Lead singer Tunde Adebimpe was the most spastic on stage black man I’d ever seen, which made him incredibly watchable. Moreover he had an elastic tenor voice that could be caustic as well as sweet and, mixed with guitarist Kyp Malone’s slightly lower pitched voice, created harmonies like that of 1950s doo wop group. Producer/guitarist David Sitek, the band’s only white member, generated a fat droning sound that, along with the harmonies, were TVOR’s sonic signature.

“Staring at the Sun” quickly became the soundtrack for the early ‘00s. I met a young woman at a nightclub who was hipster adjacent (she had high fashion taste that showed out on Bedford Avenue) and she was my guide to Wiliamsburg. Hype aside there was definitely a freshness to the scene there, which felt very different from the rest of NYC. As hipster became an international brand, TVOR grew as well, releasing at least two masterful albums (2006’s ‘Return to Cookie Mountain’ and 2008’s ‘Dear Science’) and becoming popular enough to sell out Radio City Music Hall.

After years of high productivity the band slowed down in the 2010’s and after 2014’s ‘Seeds,’ hasn’t released any new music with Tunde moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, Malone fronting some bands, and Sitek continuing to produce. When they announced a run of shows at Manhattan’s Webster Hall, the gigs sold out immediately. Thankfully a friend hooked me up with a ticket and, with a packed house of reformed hipsters, enjoyed a rocking concert that featured several tunes from their 2004 debut, ‘Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes,’ that was recently remastered.

TV On the Radio will be is LA in December and then has dates in London in the new year. Hoping all this activity means new music is coming. They’ve become one of my favorite bands. If you’re not familiar check out the clips I posted and the sample their albums.