Happy 63rd Birthday David Bowie!

Set your phasers on funky, David Bowie turns 63 today. Let's hope we all look as good as he does when we're that age.

A tribute album of Bowie songs is set for release in May. Tribute records can often be hit or miss but this one could be worth the money, as all of its proceeds go to charity (War Child International, a network of independent organizations that help children affected by war). Artists on the record are a wonderfully random smattering, from the awesomely ear-splitting A Place to Bury Strangers doing "Suffragette City" (that alone will be worth the cost), to the First Lady of France, Carla Bruni, covering "Absolute Beginners."

'Space Oddity' (Exitmusic)
'John, I'm Only Dancing' (Vivian Girls)
'Sound + Vision' (Megapuss)
'Absolute Beginners' (Carla Bruni)
'World Falls Down' (Lights)
''Heroes'' (VOICEsVOICEs)
'Boys Keep Swinging' (Duran Duran)
'TBA' (MGMT)
'Always Crashing In The Same Car' (Charlift)
'African Night Flight' (Aska w/ Moon & Moon)
'Suffragette City' (A Place to Bury Strangers)
'Theme From Cat People' (The Polyamorous Affair)
'Life on Mars' (Keren Ann)
'Red Money' (Swahili Blonde feat. John Frusciante)
'Art Decade' (Marco Benevento)
'Be My Wife' (Corridor)
'The Superman' (Aquaserge)
'Ashes To Ashes' (Warpaint)
'Quicksand' (Rainbow Arabia)
'Afraid of Americans' (We Are The World)
'Within You' (Laco$te)
'Ziggy Stardust' (Ariana Delawari)
'Modern Love' (Pizza!)
'Secret Life Of Arabia' (St Clair Board)
'Starman' (Caroline Weeks)
'The Man Who Sold The World' (Amanda Jo Williams)
'Ashes To Ashes' (Mick Karn)
'TBA' (Soulwax)

Give a Listen: Heros cover (David Bowie)-TV on the Radio and Purchase

TVTOTR's Kyp Malone Guest DJ's NPR's "All Songs Considered," Appreciates Kermit the Frog

TV on the Radio guitarist Kyp Malone was a guest DJ recently for NPR's 'All Songs Considered. He talked about his new project, Rain Machine and played some interesting favorites including Kermit the Frog's "Rainbow Connection." The podcast is available for download here.

Seen Your Video: Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at Bonnaroo

Sorry for the radio silence kids. Working hard on
The Wrens video interview to get it posted sometime before they put out their next record (heh). So much good stuff in it though, it's hard to cut anything out!

In the meantime, I had this sent to me recently and got laughing so hard I almost snorted my morning coffee through my nose. Robert Smigel may be bold but he's also a friggin genius. And the thing I love about Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is he is so equal opportunity in his bashing. TV on the Radio? The Decemberists? Beastie Boys? He'll poop on any of you, he ain't skerred...

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Goes to Bonnaroo (1)


Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Goes to Bonnaroo (2)

Lights That Flash in the Evening: TV on the Radio @ 930 Club (6-8-09)

24 hours after seeing The Hold Steady tear down the place, I was back to see the first of TV on the Radio's two night stand at the 930 Club. It would be hard for anyone to follow up Craig Finn and company's hyperknetic stage show, but if anyone could it would be TVOTR's lead singer Tunde Adebimpe. That man has smoother dance moves than Fred Astaire and James Brown put together.





The set started off with slower songs, almost teasing the crowd. Having seen the set list, I was waiting for the mad eruption of dancing, both onstage and off, once they hit mid-set with the 1-2 power punch of "Golden Age" into "Wolf Like Me."

And when it hit, the sight of 1500 people pogoing in time with the Adebimpe's rise-and-fall vocal jabs during "Wolf" was an awesome sight. The crowd may had been slow to respond up to then, but from that point forward, the eyes of every bobbing head in the 930 were pinned to the heated swirl onstage. TV on the Radio was awake and ready to howl hallelujah this DC night.

(See the rest of the photos from the show here)

Monolith Festival 2009 Announced

Seems they're still working up the list of artists but it's great to see that the Monolith Festival at Red Rocks in Denver, CO is on again this year. There was talk last year that it wouldn't return as it wasn't a high-dollar generating venture, so it's great to see they made it work.

As many of you may know, this year we booked many of the artists directly from your suggestions and comments via the Monolith Facebook Group, making the 2009 MONOLITH Festival a true festival for the fans. We'd like to thank everyone for being part of the process, and we are confident that you will be excited by many of our acts -- as you actually helped pick them!

Look for the new festival website in early June, complete with ticket information and on-sale dates.

The first act announced today was Starfucker (meh), but it's still early. Last year, they had awesome bigger acts like TVOTR, and many smaller more indie acts like ATE and A Place to Bury Strangers, among others. (You can read my coverage here: VIP Party, Day 1, Day 2.)

I have a special place in my heart for Monolith as that's where I met a bizillion great fellow writerly types last year (MOKB, Mr. Picasso, Heather B, Ryan, J and his rock mayhem, DDE, among others), and started my little photography addiction, so I'm definitely hoping to return. You coming with?

Earotica: Dear Science-TV on the Radio Review

(Editors Note: Recently, Between Love and Like added a new writer, Dave 'Scout' Tafoya, to our crew. This review is Scout's first contribution to us, the first, we hope, of many. Welcome Scout!)

When an established band changes its sound – the size of the shift notwithstanding – they take a risk. They risk alienating an existing fanbase, they risk not finding an audience for their new sounds, they risk opening themselves up to new pressures, and they risk criticism from everyone with a voice loud enough to whisper. With this in mind, when a band decides on a 180 degree shift, to go where it’s never gone before, they must possess many qualities, the foremost among those being boldness.

TV on the Radio is a band with a blend of sonic components so particular that not even veteran critics have been able to appropriately classify them. Elements of doo-wop, R&B, drone rock, post-punk, soul, and avant-garde are utilized in their records, often in the same song. Little surprise then that TVotR's latest release, the musically accessible, Dear Science, takes ground elsewhere, in unambiguous political fury and whiplash-inducing stylistic transformations.

This transformation isn’t immediately evident from the first track on Dear Science, the stomping, fuzzy “Halfway Home,” but the fury is. Lead singer Tunde Adebimpe’s lyrics are cryptic and seem to place blame for some natural catastrophe on every individual who had knowledge of it but did nothing to stop it. The production subtly betrays a firmer presence of every member of the band – the bass crawls around behind the layers and layers of guitar and synth, while the drums sound like a mixture of programming and live kit. When “Home” draws to its phase-heavy close, the first real evidence of change arrives in the form of guitarist Kyp Malone’s sultry and soulful “Crying.” Malone’s voice, long lost behind Adebimpe’s commanding multi-octave range, is loud, clear, and shows a personality akin to Curtis Mayfield. Guitarist (and TVotR producer) David Sitek’s sound is discernible here in that time-honored tradition of lightly-distorted funk guitar, the notes being plucked, rather than that beautiful, Godspeed You! Black Emperor scraping he typically favors. Sitek’s guitar remains reigned in throughout the record, and compliments the arrival of the playful sounding synth and horn section funk (and what an entrance they make). Malone’s lyrics hint strongly at a corrupt figurehead not unlike the one recently dethroned by Barack Obama (mention is made of “coke in the nose of the nobles” and “tanks with no red light in sight”). It is here where the album’s strongest lyrical theme comes into play, that of a progressive era just around the corner. Just before the song’s many complimentary instrumental licks weave in between each other to form the closing measures, Malone calls for change: “Time to take the wheel and the road from the masters. Take this car, drive it straight into the wall, build it back up from the floor and stop our crying.” His voice shaking the rafters, Malone wants us to reach out and grab that power to change, as it is mere inches from our hands.

"Dancing Choose," a rocker with gangsta rap coursing through its veins, breaks with the band's normal stylistic boundaries. Four notes of distorted bass and then Adebimpe coming out swinging, his deft enunciation is backed by subdued rhythm section and saxophone, the whole scene reminiscent of an Ali one-two punch. This is TV on the Radio encapsulating post-punk as a whole, as it’s never been done before. “Stork and Owl” has Malone harmonizing quite beautifully with himself about death, love, and birth, sounding like an early-TVOTR tune with cinematic production. Its break-in pace seems somewhat out of step though when following “Choose” and coming before the album's strutting peak, “Golden Age.” “Golden Age,” is a song as catchy as it is poignant, and seems to capture all the best elements of 1970s music. Malone’s fluid rhythm and his assurance of that progressive era’s proximity just in time is enough to make the last eight years in America feel like just a bad dream. When the horns, layered vocals, dizzying violins, and simple but undeniable bass line come in, the song gives the illusion of waking from one dream (of decay and darkness) into another one (of euphoria and of the horns of seraphs). Sitek’s production is never better than on this minor miracle track. And he doesn’t stop there.

Sitek nearly outdoes himself on “Family Tree.” A combination of a hauntingly gorgeous piano riff steeped in delay and reverb and Adebimpe’s words are a testament to the pleasures of the now and the joy of life out of the shadows of legacy. With the help of Malone’s high harmonies and those swooning strings, “Family Tree” forms an unforgettable breath of life. It is the most uncharacteristic song in the TVOTR canon and their sweetest, most aurally pleasing effort to date. They then drop-kick us back into strife, hypocrisy, and political piracy, lest we get too comfortable, with “Red Dress.” Jagged guitar playing by Sitek and Malone, coupled with drummer Jaleel Bunton’s relentless afrobeat percussion, leads this tale of slavery and lost identity. As different from early TVOTR as “Fear of Music” was from “Talking Heads: 77,” “Red Dress” brims with anger and the fire of life.

Sitek’s mixing and producing creativity shines bright on the next three tracks. He pulls out all the stops and fills every second with production tricks on “Love Dog, each one as captivating as the next. But this quiet, brooding post-punk slow-burner is best suited to headphones as it exudes more atmosphere than hooks. “Shout Me Out” features acrobatic melodies and a chorus that sticks in the head, and “DLZ,” an indictment of death erasing one’s legacy on earth, becomes better with every repeat listen.

To say that Dear Science finishes strongly is putting it mildly. “Lover’s Day,” boldest of the album’s rebellion and genre-bending madness, is the most vivid and impassioned depiction of two bodies intertwined outside of the misogynistic confines of modern Hip-Hop, or the exaggerated naughty world of Prince. The music starts calm, military drums and soft tambourine, and builds. The music of “Lover’s Day” never reaches the same climax as Malone’s words do, but the song is still as lasting a testament to intimacy as there ever was.

Dear Science may be different from TV on the Radio's earliest efforts but this difference is genuine, emotional, demanding, captivating, exciting, and vital. It's got some definitive high points and while each of those points may not be the same height, Dear Science absolutely proves that TV on the Radio has the balls to switch things up, to vary from the tried and true. These changes were well worth the risk.

Show Review: Monolith Festival @ Red Rocks, Denver, CO--Day 2 (continued)

Day 2 starts here.
(Day 1 recap here and here.)

6.5 Hearts of Palm
Yeah, I saw some of Hearts of Palm's set. Eh. Photos were about the best thing I walked away with.

(More photos from Hearts of Palm's set here)

7. The Whigs
They put The Whigs in that little hallway room. The ear splitting, rocktastic, popular Whigs in a room that doubles as a hallway, a mind-boggling move to say the least. It sounds stupid, but after seeing these guys at SXSW 2008, I really wanted to get a shot of Julian Dorio's hair flying around while playing here at Monolith....something about it just makes me laugh, probably because it reminds me of Animal on the Muppets (yes, I know, I'm a dork.) The lighting wasn't stellar in this room but I think I scored one or two good ones of both Dorio as well as the group as a whole.







Playing-wise they were, as usual, fucking awesome. But the immense crowd, coupled with the inability for the security people to keep space in front for the camera folks to shoot without being inundated by said crowd, made me way too claustrophobic. Which bummed me out as The Whigs were one of the groups I was really psyched to see again live.

(More photos from The Whigs' set here)

I did get a few minutes in with lead singer/guitarist Parker Gispert afterwards. He said they're doing more east coast dates and will be hitting DC this fall (with the Kings of Leon in November at DAR; DAR, well you can't win em all).


8. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
Ruling the mainstage in the late afternoon was Sharon Jones and her Dap Kings. I'd heard she is a full on cyclone live and that was no joke.



Her sound of soul and funk harkens one back to an earlier time in pop music history when girl groups ruled and bouffant hairdos were the rage, when Tina Turner danced her ass off in that macramé dress while belting out a song. Jones absolutely knows how to hold a crowd in her hand.



Dancing barefoot onstage, pulling this crazy caped crusader named TRL out of the crowd for some onstage teaching about how a woman just wants a man to "Be Easy" (though we were all convinced that dancing with Sharon Jones is about as close as TRL would ever want a woman to get to him)...





...having women come up on stage to dance with her, and ending with a show-stopping, heart-pounding, ass-shakin, body-quakin version of James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," she was literally all over the place. The center of the cyclone had settled right over us and we were all happy to be swept up into the inward spiraling wind that was Sharon Jones. She is, by far, the hardest working woman in showbiz.

(More photos from Sharon Jones/Dap Kings set here)


9. The Airborne Toxic Event
Racing back up the 230 stairs, I found a bit of a traffic jam trying to get to the inside stages. Apparently, the organizers hadn't anticipated the draw of the some of these inside bands like the Presets and Does it Offend You Yeah? (Dee captures the mayhem well here). In order to slow the flow, they closed off one of the two entrances, allowing one person in when one person left the inside stage hallway; not both entrances mind you, just the one, which didn't make much sense. So I had to do some fast talking and thankfully, a very nice employee led me through the kitchen to the side room where they were playing. (whew!)

By now, I'm sure you’ve heard about that awful Pitchfork review of Airborne's debut record and Airborne's spirited response. After I'd read the review, I emailed lead singer Mikel Jollet and said you should invite the guy to a show as he obviously has never seen y'all live. Now, if you’ve been reading my site here at all, you know I've interviewed The Airborne Toxic Event, I’ve reviewed them, I’ve photographed them...I’m a fan. But remember that Replacements Factor I spoke of ? I think Airborne sorta has that too. Their record is good, don't get me wrong, but had I heard their record before seeing them live, I honestly don’t know if I would have been quite as knocked out by them. That stunning "thing" that they have, like the Mats, A Place to Bury Strangers, and countless others, that thing about them that seems to raise the hairs on the back of your neck, that's so completely obvious when you see them on the stage. You get glimpses of it in what you hear from the scripted confines of a studio booth and mixing board, but seeing them live is when you forget to breathe. (In my humble opinion of course...)







And Monolith was no exception. It was a fantastic set even though the entire band was all terribly ill with the flu. Drummer Daren Taylor told me afterward, "I'm exhausted, but I played my ass off." Yes, yes he was, and yes, yes he did.



That's because Airborne is a band that just can’t let themselves play a bad show, even being so sick they could barely remain standing (bassist Noah Harmon, in fact, sat down on the rocks in back of the stage at one point). The author of that Pitchfork review, Ian Cohen, claimed the band is about market research and does what they do according to a "formula" so to speak. Though Cohen would probably somehow consider playing deathly ill as part of that "formula," I bet everyone who was at their show at Monolith saw it for what it really was, a band obsessively dedicated to their audience, their performance, and their music.







Plus, I mean seriously, how beautifully does lead guitarist Steven Chen photograph? You just cannot shoot a bad photo of this guy...

(More photos from the Airborne Toxic Event's set here)


10. TV on the Radio
And while we're on the topic of dedication...there had been rumors all day that TVOTR may not make their evening slot but no one knew why. Around their show time on the mainstage, the photo pit was as jammed full as the crowd behind us in anticipation. Finally, 15 minutes past their scheduled start time, the announcer came out to tell us the story: Seems the band was in Salt Lake City at 11 am, gearing up to head to Red Rocks, but the bus broke down. Sunday, Salt Lake City, big bus=trouble finding the right parts. By about 2 pm though, they apparently said fuck it, found a bunch of rental cars, and literally broke many speed limits to get to Red Rocks a mere 15 minutes late. Festival organizers thought they wouldn't make it as TVOTR checked in with their location progress throughout the day, but the band was certain they would (the organizers had obviously never driven with NY-drivers apparently, heh).

Needless to say, when TVOTR hit the stage, the place, as well as the band, went bananas. Lead singer Tunde Adebimpe never stopped moving the entire show, alternating between pogoing and dancing (and damn, can the man dance!).



They're out doing a few shows supporting the super incredible Dear Science. It's funky, it's thrash, it's rock, all laced with interesting pop sensibilities. This record is, and absolutely deserves to be, in everyone's top 10 lists for 2008. This is definitely a group you MUST check out live.



(More photos from TV on the Radio's set here)


11. CSS(Cansei de Ser Sexy)
I figured CSS would be a big draw so for the last time over my two days at Red Rocks, I trucked back up the 230 stairs (total stairs climbed over 48 hours: 986875675454). But in doing so, I had to miss the back end of the TVOTR show, which was a drag. Even more of a drag because CSS was 15 minutes late in starting. My guess? CSS lead singer Lovefoxxx had to finish tying the last garbage bag piece to her jacket.


(More photos from CSS's set here)

"Hyper" is an understated adjective for Portugal's CSS. But so is "addicting," shake your ass madly," and "listen on repeat." Lead singer Lovefoxxx is quite the Portugese Beyonce, dancing, hair tossin, crowd-flirting up a storm, all the while singing her ass off. These guys were definitely worth waiting around for....



At this point, I was seriously shivering (a mile above sea level gets damn cold at night), and I had no interest in seeing two French guys dj on the mainstage (yes, it was Justice. No, I didn't need to see dj'ing done live), so I called it a night.

What a couple of days...Red Rocks was incredible. I heard a rumor that Monolith lost money and it's possible it won't happen again, which would be a shame. It's got potential, true potential, so I hope they can make it work. The lineup was a really interesting collection of bands, all different and indie. The surroundings were amazing. And sure, there were a few issues (the indoor stage setup, security not always understanding the setup for photographers) but overall, things were smooth, and it was, most importantly, fun. The Monolith Festival did what a good music festival should do, have enough bigger name acts to draw folks sprinkled with lots of smaller groups that you'll walk away happy to have discovered. I know I'll definitely go again next year, if only to shoot more of the incredible landscape.

And the winners are....

Awhile back, I ran a contest for TV On the Radio swag (vinyl copy of their latest, 'Dear Science,' and a nifty cool poster designed by TVOTR lead singer, Tunde Adebimpe). And, as is sometimes the case, Blogger ate the post and I forgot to redo it.

So! It's high time to post our winners! They are...

Vinyl: Mariana
Poster: Scout

Please send your addresses at Between Love and Like's email address and I'll it along. Thanks for playing y'all.

Shout Me Out: TV on the Radio "Dear Science" (Vinyl) and Poster Giveaway

“I like pop music,” Kyp Malone said in a telephone interview. “I also like the sound of a dying refrigerator. I can listen to that for an hour and a half if I’m in the mood.” (Read this rest of this really excellent piece on TV on the Radio and their new record, "Dear Science" here.)

TV on the Radio/myspace are funny, wicked smart, and a serious force to be reckoned with live. I caught them last week at the Monolith Festival, and was absolutely blown away, both by them and lead singer Tunde Adebimpe's amazing dance moves. I'm here to tell you their long awaited new record, Dear Science, in stores today, will be on everyone's best of lists for this year, you can count on it. So what better way to start giveaways here at Between Love and Like than with some goodies from this eloquent and fabulous band?

Contest:
I am giving away a nifty vinyl copy of "Dear Science, as well as a poster that Tunde Adebimpe designed specifically for the record's release.



If you are interested in either, please leave the following in the comments:
* Which item you are interested in (vinyl or poster)
* How you discovered TV on the Radio

Contest ends Thursday.

A video for one of the first songs off the record, "Golden Age" is below. It's a song with a pop sound reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall" and 70s David Bowie, coupled with funk undertones from that paisley place in Minneapolis. Where the dancing cops are from, however, that's anybody's guess...

The NY Times Article/Interview with TV on the Radio

This piece with TV on the Radio was in the NY Times recently and provides some really interesting insights on both the band, their outlook, and their new record, Dear Science, which is out today.

Keeping It Indie but Thinking Big Thoughts
By JON PARELES
Published: September 19, 2008

ONE day in July construction next door damaged the outside wall of Dave Sitek’s Headgear recording studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s the studio where the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars and Mr. Sitek’s own band, TV on the Radio, made albums that drew international attention to Brooklyn rock just a few years ago.

Those were the indie days, when TV on the Radio was passing out homemade discs at cafes, and band members squeezed bits of recording time between hours spent at day jobs. Over the past five years TV on the Radio has made its way steadily up the circuit, from independent to major label, from local clubs to international tours, while its music has grown ever more ambitious. Those ambitions are bohemian ones: packing a world of ideas into each song while ignoring both commercial imperatives and ingrown hipster cachet.

Tunde Adebimpe, the singer who started TV on the Radio with Mr. Sitek, unabashedly describes its music as art. When the band moved from the independent Touch & Go label to Interscope Records, one of the stipulations of the contract was that “there would be no involvement from the label on the creative end,” Mr. Adebimpe said. As the recording business loses its ability to create blockbusters, the band’s self-guided, self-sufficient approach looks like a practical survival strategy.

On Sept. 23 TV on the Radio follows its widely praised 2006 album, “Return to Cookie Mountain,” with a magnificent third album, “Dear Science,” (the comma is part of the title). The songs are vertiginous, full of cantilevered rhythms and synthetic sounds, yet openly catchy. Mr. Adebimpe and Kyp Malone sing about war and technology, environmental damage and racism while also invoking pleasure and hope.

The songs are pensive but ultimately joyful. The album starts with “Halfway Home,” an elegy tucked behind a peppy nonsense-syllable chorus, and it ends with “Lover’s Day,” a celebration of sex: “Yes of course there are miracles/Under your sighs and moans.”

Often a song starts with stark, kinetic drumbeats, only to thicken and evolve with layer upon layer of counterpoint. The band’s sound is “representative of the human experience,” Mr. Sitek said. “You have your first introduction to sound and hearing, and then you learn a language and then you learn to confuse yourself with that language, and then you’re left with this euphoric, slap-happy, I’ll call it aging twilight consciousness where you’re just befuddled at the human experience and all of the things you’ve accumulated with no direct guideposts or instruction manual.”

In an era of disposable downloads and ring tones “Dear Science,” is a coherent collection of songs made for repeated listening. “If you’re going to reach for it, reach all the way for it,” Mr. Sitek said. “Albums like ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘Thriller’ and those kind of records, you had to reach far above the din of cynicism and modern living to get to that place, against all the odds. The industry used to support that kind of record making, and just because the marketplace of the industry doesn’t support it now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still try for it.”

But the album was made on a local scale: in Mr. Sitek’s studio, with a horn section borrowed from the steady-gigging Brooklyn Afrobeat band Antibalas. “I think the album as a format is dying,” Mr. Sitek said. “To do an album of this magnitude, just in terms of the sheer number of things that had to be done and the amount of musicians involved and the amount of studio hours spent — if we didn’t have my studio, who knows? We could have been really in debt for the rest of our entire beings.”

TV on the Radio has held on to the experimental spirit of what was briefly, before landlords and tourists noticed, a neighborhood of low rents and high creative density. “You could go out on a Saturday night and go to eight different places and see eight different bands, and they would all be interesting — really interesting,” Mr. Adebimpe said. There was a feeling, he said, that “I have to keep making stuff that I like so I can keep hanging out with my friends who make stuff that I like.”

Back in 1997 Mr. Adebimpe — at the time a filmmaker doing stop-motion animation, with a day job at Film Forum — and Mr. Sitek found themselves as roommates in a Williamsburg loft, which led to a musical partnership. “It just became apparent very quickly that we were going to be friends,” Mr. Adebimpe recalled in an interview at the Verb Cafe in Williamsburg, “because his room was full of all this musical equipment with nothing but a mattress, and my room was full of paints and video equipment and nothing but a mattress.”

Soon they took on collaborators: Mr. Malone on guitar and vocals, Jaleel Bunton on drums and Gerard Smith on bass. “We bullied everyone else into the band because we didn’t want to go through it alone,” said Mr. Sitek, whose main instrument is guitar. All the band members are in their early 30s.

The four-inch dent in the studio wall is the latest iteration of what’s already an old story: the continuing gentrification of Williamsburg. The members of TV on the Radio all still live in the neighborhood, watching bodegas being replaced by fancy restaurants and boutiques. In one song on the new album, “Dancing Choose,” Mr. Adebimpe sings at near-rap speed:

Angry young mannequin

American apparently

Still to the rhythm

Better get to the back of me

Can’t stand the vision.

A high-rise apartment building is going up next door to Mr. Sitek’s studio — actually two studios, since Stay Gold, where TV on the Radio made “Dear Science,” is in the rooms next to Headgear. “They build one skyscraper, and skyscrapers get lonely,” Mr. Sitek said in his three-pack-a-day rasp, lighting up in the alley alongside his favorite Williamsburg club, Zebulon. “So then they call their friends and more skyscrapers come, and they throw a party. And the next thing you know there’s a skyscraper blogging about the skyscraper scene in Williamsburg.”

Early on, TV on the Radio benefited from the talent-spotting and reputation-building of the indie-rock blogosphere. But eventually the band felt typecast. “I’m done with cool,” Mr. Malone said. “I’ve been done with cool for years.”

Mr. Sitek said: “We always wanted to reach a lot of people. We never wanted to be obscure. I think it was just hard for us to get a handle on how to make the kind of music we make and how to describe it. And it started to be misunderstood that we were trying to do some kind of weird art-house-rock obscure thing. But that’s not it at all.

“In our minds these songs are that simple. We needed to get a lot of stuff out of our system, but it wasn’t in opposition to something. We weren’t like: We want to make this giant complicated thing. It’s just we had five different people with completely different perspectives, trying to make all of our ideas fit into one thing.”

“Dear Science,” is both an extension and a turnabout of TV on the Radio’s past work. Nervous energy and apocalyptic scenarios filled the band’s 2003 EP, “Young Liars” (Touch & Go), and its first two albums, “Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes” (Touch & Go) in 2004 and “Return to Cookie Mountain” (Interscope) in 2006. The songs on those albums contemplated the aftermath of Sept. 11, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. The lyrics were surreal and allusive, arriving in dense art-rock productions that melded looped drumbeats, doo-wop vocal harmonies, atmospheric noise, guitar dissonance and improbable pop hooks.

“I like pop music,” Mr. Malone said in a telephone interview. “I also like the sound of a dying refrigerator. I can listen to that for an hour and a half if I’m in the mood.”

There’s still a deep streak of dread on the new album. Its title, “Dear Science,” includes the comma because it was the salutation of a letter Mr. Sitek posted on the studio wall while the band was working on the album. Mr. Adebimpe said it was written “in a kind of kid’s handwriting on yellow notebook paper.” The letter was addressed to Science itself, demanding that it “fix all the things you’re talking about” or shut up.

But through much of the album there’s a counterpoint of hope. “It’s hard to tour the apocalypse,” Mr. Adebimpe said. “For me the point of songs, the point of getting that stuff out, is getting it out and trying to put it in a place so it’s not eating you alive.”

For this album, Mr. Sitek said, “I didn’t want anything to be misunderstood, and I didn’t want anything to be cloudy in an unintended way.” He continued, “We were unpeeling these layers between us and what we thought was absolutely stunning and beautiful, and not so depressing this time.”

Though the album has angry moments, much of the music tilts toward major chords and willfully upbeat choruses. “The age of miracles, the age of sound,” the song “Golden Age” insists over a beat that echoes the heyday of Michael Jackson, “Well there’s a Golden Age comin’ round.”

Mr. Malone, the song’s main writer, said: “I’m starting to realize that I don’t want to just write jeremiads, even though the times kind of call for them. With ‘Golden Age’ I was trying consciously to create a utopian world inside a pop song. I don’t think that three minutes of music on a commercial record is going to bring paradise, but I feel like there is power in music and power in our words and power in what we put out into the world."

After his interview Mr. Adebimpe walked with a visitor past Stay Gold studios. On the sidewalk was Brian Chase, the drummer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who are finishing an album there with Mr. Sitek producing. Could Mr. Adebimpe drop by later and overdub some whistling on a song? Sure he could. For a moment Williamsburg seemed like the bohemian neighborhood it had been — at least for a little longer.

Correction: September 21, 2008
An article on Sept. 7 about the band TV on the Radio misidentified the owners of Headgear recording studio in Brooklyn. The owners are Alex Lipsen, Dan Long and S. F. Norton; the studio is not owned by Dave Sitek, a member of TV on the Radio. (Mr. Sitek owns Stay Gold, a studio in the same building.) The article also misidentified a recording studio used by the band Liars. It has recorded with Mr. Sitek at Hickory Lane studios, not at Headgear. And the article misstated the cause of damage to the building that houses Headgear. The external wall was damaged after concrete was poured against it; it was not damaged by a bulldozer.