Blues From Down Here

Though they are just at the other side of the state, the Brooklyn-based TV on the Radio—who have several years and tens of thousands of miles touring under their belt—have yet to bring their live show to Buffalo. All of that changes this Monday, June 30, when the band takes the stage at Town Ballroom.

They’ve made their mark as one of the guiding lights shining up from rock’s underbelly, and finally they’re bringing their revolution to the Queen City.

Built around the core of guitarist/vocalist/multi-instrumentalists Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe and producer/multi-instrumentalist Dave Sitek, TVOTR have made a mark on their own terms. With boundless experimentation and notable fervor for politics, both personal and global, they’ve rose from a home studio project to a band of epic soundtracks conveying ideas and emotions grandiose, gritty, impetuous, and widescreen. Sometimes you can even dance to it.

When 2006’s Return to Cookie Mountain arrived—with the band’s genre-defiant tendencies played to full effect along with a guest spot from fan David Bowie—it found almost universal acclaim. By the time the year was over, TVOTR had claimed a space as one of the most important bands in the world, with the album landing on almost every “best of” list (including this newspaper’s). TVOTR were named Artist of the Year for 2006 by Spin magazine.

TVOTR’s Buffalo stop is part of a mini summer tour, and marks the band’s last run of dates before completing the followup to Return to Cookie Mountain, which is due sometime in the next year. In the recent down time outside the band, Malone has been playing solo while Sitek helmed starlet Scarlett Johansson’s recently issued album of Tom Waits covers.

A selected TVOTR discography:

OK Calculator
(Self-released, 2002)

The band’s out of print debut—with the obvious ode to Radiohead in the title—collects their early, lo-fi, four-track pastiches and is one of those records more often talked about than actually heard. After one eager blogger called it suberb, Tunde Adibimpe told an interviewer, “And it’s fun, and I love it, but I wouldn’t call it superb.”

Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
(Touch And Go, 2004)

The Brooklyn lads methodically mix strains of rock and jazz for—dare I call it?—a modern kind of prog. Yet, on the flip it has the radicalism and hollow-point politics that make TV on the Radio their generation’s Public Enemy or Clash. “The Wrong Way” deftly tackles racial identity over squonking horns and a Bo Diddley beat, while the pulse-pounding “Staring at the Sun” is like a dark, disco-soaked hymnal.

New Health Rock
(Touch And Go, 2004)

This EP single is the bridge from Desperate Youth to Cookie Mountain. The title track fuses fractured Prince funk, playground chanting, and dissonant noise and beats. Also here is a radical refiguring of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Modern Romance.”

Return to Cookie Mountain
(Interscope, 2006)

The breakthrough. TVOTR expertly put together everything they had been testing, unifying postpunk, soul, psychedelic, no wave, electronic, gospel, avant pop, and experimental jazz, blending these disparate styles for an offbeat, unclassifiable new rock that proves addictive and utterly listenable. It’s not just beautiful noise: These are great songs. “Wolf Like Me” enters with a thumping, soulful precision. “A Method” feels like a twisted, darkly beautiful, inside-out recasting of a vintage Beach Boys song. The noisenik groove of “Wash the Day Away” is the perfect closing salvo of salvation.