For TV on the Radio, the New York-based Punk Jazz Rock fusion quintet, gathering steam in such a city creates a problem, especially when you live in one of its boroughs. The band has been creating a steady, but low buzz since their debut album OK Calculator in 2002, and while they have been on an upward trajectory since, they’ve operated generally below the radar.
However, 2006’s Return to Cookie Mountain garnered a staggering amount of positive reviews, ranking fourth best album of the year in Rolling Stone, second best on Pitchfork Media’s Top 50 Albums of the Year and it was named Spin magazine’s Album of the Year. In September of this year when their latest effort Dear Science hit the shelves, expectations were running high for TVOTR to make an album to rival Return to Cookie Mountain. And by all accounts, this album could be poised to make them superstars.
TVOTR’s work has become increasingly more visible. Their songs have been used on the soundtracks of several major network television shows and they’ve done every major music festival and talk show. Lead singer Tunde Adebimpe will even appear with Anne Hathaway in the film Rachel Getting Married due out later this year.
But what celebrity giveth, the city taketh away. Popular taste is arguably decided in the city, but ironically when it leaves the quarantine of the five boroughs and tries to flourish outside its confines, that’s usually when the architects of pop-culture turn on it, branding it cliché or common.
Read an interview with the band here.
