March 21, 2004
New New York Rockers Follow Their Gloom
By BEN SISARIO, The NY Times
The most talked-about new album of New York rock isn't a downer, it just sounds that way.
TV on the Radio's "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes," released two weeks ago on the Touch and Go label, has arrived with the same up-from-the-clubs excitement that greeted the debut albums by the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with raves in the music press and celebrity sightings at gigs. And like those bands, TV on the Radio, a three-piece group from Brooklyn, has produced a first album that is a stunning statement of purpose.
But while the new New York rock has been defined largely by an aggressive sound and an extroverted attitude â?? coming from bands like the Strokes and the Yeahs as well as Oneida, the Liars, the Rapture, Ex Models and so many others â?? TV on the Radio and a handful of other newish bands represent another side of the music: dark, gloomy and introverted.
Throughout "Desperate Youth," the TV on the Radio style is an enigmatic swirl of pained, soulful vocals and creepy soundscapes. The pulsating bass and the washes of acidic guitar, by David Andrew Sitek, recall 80's alternative-rock bands like the Pixies, but the amazingly versatile vocals by Tunde Adebimpe are harder to place, twisting classic R & B patterns with the coolly manic grace of early Peter Gabriel.
Mr. Adebimpe, a slightly lumpy 29-year-old with permanently watery eyes and thick glasses, seems incapable of striking a rock star pose. Instead, he moans, cries and mumbles through songs about doomed relationships and mysterious agonies, often drawing out the words over several beats, as if to relish the power of each vowel. And his harmonizing, with Kyp Malone â?? who also plays guitar â?? is obsessive and chilling. In "Ambulance," which uses layers of overdubbed voices to create the illusion of a full a cappella ensemble, the two men murmur a bass line straight out of doo-wop while, in the lead parts, they slide up to whistlelike falsettos. The lyrics are like something out of J. G. Ballard: "I will be your accident if you will be my ambulance," they sing. "I will be your screech and crash if you will be my crutch and cast."
"The Wrong Way," which opens the album, highlights another thing that makes TV on the Radio stand out from the typical nouveau New York rock band: Mr. Adebimpe and Mr. Malone are black, and Mr. Sitek is white. (The band also has a handful of collaborators in the studio and in concert, of various races.) Though the color lines have long since been crossed in hip-hop and most pop, it's still a rarity to see an interracial band come up through the ranks of underground rock, particularly in New York. In "The Wrong Way," as a distorted bass pumps and saxophones honk, Mr. Adebimpe comments obliquely on race, first saying a "new Negro politician is stirring inside of me," and then rejecting the notion: "No, there's nothing inside of me but an angry heartbeat. Can you feel this heart beat?"
These are sullen thoughts surrounded by murky and complex music â?? fresh ideas for a musical world that has largely focused on the angularity, minimalism and clarity of the post-punk period. The scene has been dominated by musical exhibitionism: debauched elegance in the case of the Strokes, the panicked disco of the Rapture, Karen O's wild swagger.
A dark undercurrent has always run through the new New York rock, in groups like Interpol, Elk City, the Walkmen and Calla. Recently it seems to be coming to the surface. Last fall the Stills released a gorgeously dreary album, "Logic Will Break Your Heart," that drew on the Cure, Joy Division and other British mopers. On the intensely paranoid "Room of Fire," even the Strokes have started to let down their guise of superhip sangfroid.
In February the Walkmen released their major label debut, "Bows + Arrows" (Record Collection /Warner Brothers); though it abandons many of the ingenious piano-based innovations of the group's 2002 debut album in favor of more conventional guitar arrangements, it still has a depth that feels new. There are hints of mid-period U2 in the grand and wind-swept open spaces of "No Christmas While I'm Talking."
The 80's are still a prime source of inspiration for New York rockers, but many of the most recent groups focus on a different side of the decade than their immediate predecessors. Instead of the confrontational, avant-garde rock of Gang of Four and the Fall, they favor the melancholy of the Cure and the opacity of Peter Gabriel.
Two groups with female singers, On!Air!Library! and Asobi Seksu, draw heavily from the British "dream pop" of groups like Lush and the Cocteau Twins, with glumly swaying rhythms, big storm clouds of guitar and spookily angelic voices. On!Air!Library!, featuring two sweet-voiced identical twin sisters, Alley and Claudia Deheza, will release its self-titled debut album on April 6 on the Arena Rock label. Its best track is "Bread," an epic round that hints at weird inner obsessions: "The reason why you don't rest/ You haven't built it." The Deheza sisters sing it in close, grandiose, Irish-tinged harmony.
Asobi Seksu takes the late-80's British connection even further on its debut album ("Asobi Seksu," released on Friendly Fire), with songs like "Let Them Wait" and "Sooner" that borrow the grimly cinematic psychedelia of My Bloody Valentine.
These newer bands owe a clear debt to their most recent predecessors. Mr. Sitek, who plays guitar and programs most of the electronic effects in TV on the Radio, has produced albums for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Liars. And the the Strokes' Julian Casablancas and the Yeahs' Karen O are no strangers to the slow-building rock ballad, though they seem more in their element when they are acting out, rousing the crowds.
Bands like the Strokes, Oneida and the Rapture were self-consciously re-establishing New York rock as gritty, noisy party music. But TV on the Radio and their ilk arrive at a time when a rock renaissance has already been firmly established in New York. They don't need to shout to let out their dark emotions, and that's something to feel good about.
